Alicia
by phfina
Summary: Well, I put my foot down, and, surprisingly, Allie said 'okay.' Begrudgingly, yeah, but she still said 'okay.' Haha, I win! Humans: 1. HA! But robots: 7 billion? Shoot.
1. ICYMI

**Chapter summary: **Boom. Boom-boom-BOOM! Our story starts ...

... after the world ends.

* * *

_April 21, 2011._

_Judgment Day._

It happened.

I don't know how it happened, but suddenly there were reports, everywhere of nuclear attacks and counterstrikes.

I heard that the USA was the first to launch: a massive strike against Russia, China, North Korea and Germany.

Yes: Germany. I guess the old software was never updated.

I couldn't believe it, but I guess something happened somewhere at the top military ... _whatever_ software and it told all the silos in Minnesota and Montana and Arkansas and Greenland of all places to launch, to launch everything, and hit everywhere.

And I guess that's how it happened.

All I know is there was panic everywhere, and the sky was lit up with hot flashes of white that blinded every poor fool who just happened to be looking toward the horizon in that general direction, and then the blackness: the black ash and soot.

And then nothing.

Just panic, and the distant, muted, boom-boom-boom of another strike and then the aftershock of the explosion expanding so fast that it went supersonic, and a bright flash as the whole quarter of the sky lit up with the explosion of where a city used to be and now there was nothing there, I bet: just rubble and ash and death.

Cars were useless: they wouldn't start, and then, the roads and highways were strewn with broken-down cars and debris and ... bodies.

Death was everywhere, and in this pitch black, you couldn't see it until you tripped over it or your car ran over it, making you lose control, and making you watch yourself swerve off the road into a ditch if you were lucky (I was), or headlong into a tree, your head smashed through the windshield, your body already piece-parted for ...

For the carrion to feed on.

I know what Hell looked like: pitch black, black as tar. I know what it smelled like: it smelled sweet, like charred flesh, and rotten, sulfury, like spoilt eggs, and chemically, like tires and wires and wood and steel burning in the nuclear fires that didn't go out.

It was a miracle, a _miracle,_ that I made it back to Middletown High School, and crowded my way into the shelter along with the rest of the mass of humanity who were smart enough to look for shelter and remembered that high schools where supposed to have fallout shelters.

It was a miracle Middletown wasn't a pile of rubble and melted glass. I guess Middletown, Connecticut was just too small a ... 'city' to be considered a target.

But here we were, all stuffed together, me, a whole bunch of high school kids, and maybe their parents, maybe teachers, maybe some other people, like me, who were lucky enough to make it to the shelter.

And no power.

I thought of my husband, Vic (short for 'Richard,' ... don't ask), during this time. He ...

We've been married a year. He was a man of few thoughts and even fewer words. He was in the Army, but that wasn't his passion. Don't get me wrong! He was a patriot, and he loved his country more than anybody else in the world, as far as I knew, and that's why he served, but he wanted to take me, and our little daughter growing in my womb, and buy a farm in the country, I mean the _country-_country of Connecticut, and raise chickens, and rabbits, and whatever, and have a vegetable garden, and live off the land.

Vic.

I shook my head.

He didn't grow up in the country. He grew up in town, went to school, joined the Army, and managed not to shoot himself nor his troops, and I found that pretty damn amazing, given how clumsy the big lug of a man I fell in love with and married was.

He'd been shipped off to Afghanistan when the strike hit, so I was on my own, driving my car, trying to get to shelter, and _bam! thub-thub-thub _I was off the road, in a ditch, and couldn't move my car to save my life.

And that's what I had to do. I had to save my life, and the life of the child in my womb, for Vic, when he came back from Afghanistan with his troops, to find me and rescue me, and ...

_Who was I fooling?_ I asked myself.

Tears started to fall from my eyes, and I was glad for the darkness, for a change, so nobody else could see me being weak.

I can't be weak now.

The weak gave up and died. I had to be strong, because nobody else would be strong for me now.

I sniffled and angrily wiped the tears away, blaming hormones, and ... well, the catastrophe of the world's end for my weepy eyes.

A hand unerringly sought my hand and put something soft in it. A hanky, I felt.

I wiped my eyes and blew my nose.

"Thank you," I whispered into the darkness to the person seated next to me on the hard, cold concrete floor.

I blew my nose again and wondered if I should give the hanky back, now messy with my ... well, mess, knowing I shouldn't, but knowing I should, given that everything was precious now, since nothing was certain anymore.

"What's your name?" I asked quietly, conversationally.

We were going to be next to each other for a long time. It made sense to be nice with everybody.

From beyond my neighbor, a boy's voice spoke: "It's Alicia," he said.

I didn't know what to make of that. Was this her boyfriend? Was I being intrusive?

He explained: "She doesn't speak. She never has."

"Oh," I said.

Somehow, knowing this didn't help the situation. I felt more uncomfortable now around this silent stranger who gave me her hanky. I felt around for her hand, grasping it.

Her hand was freezing.

"You poor thing!" I exclaimed, and I pulled her hand up to my mouth, and blew on it. "Are your parents here?" I asked solicitously. "Did you find them?"

And I didn't ask: _did they make it?_

The boy piped up again for her. "She doesn't have any. She was living with her aunt or something, I don't know," he said, matter-of-factly. He didn't know. It sounded like he didn't really care.

"Oh," I said, again, feeling _more_ embarrassed. I put my arm around her shoulder and pulled her into my side. She was small. Maybe junior high, that would put her at ... twelve? thirteen? fourteen?

That would put her right at an age where she didn't deserve this. She didn't deserve any of this.

I thought less of my own situation and worries as I comforted her.

"It's okay," I whispered to her, then amended quickly: "It's gonna be okay. We're going to make it through this."

A sharp, bitter bark of laughter burst from beyond Alicia. "How?" the boy asked, and added: "ICYMI it's the fucking nuclear apocalypse out there."

My brow furrowed. "'ICYMI'?" I asked perplexed, but angered by his tone and by his cynicism.

"Jesus Christ," he said in a very annoyed tone: "ICYMI: 'in case you missed it.' All you grown-ups are so stupid!"

"Hey!" Another, older, voice piped up in the darkness, a teacher maybe, and scolded the boy to silence.

I had about seven things to say to the young man, but I bit my lip and said none of them.

You don't ... _talk_ to your elders that way. Or, that's how I grew up, anyway.

But it wasn't the boy talking, or it was, but he was a scared child, alone? Did he have his parents to lean on? And the _'fucking nuclear apocalypse'_ did actually just happen out there, and because I was one of the 'grown-ups' to him, it was all probably my fault, in his mind.

I pulled Alicia into my side more tightly, sheltering her from the hell outside and the cynicism inside ... that is: the hell inside, too, and I thought to her, but did not say, ...

_We are going to make it, because ..._

And I didn't know the 'because.' I just knew we were going to make it, because the baby in my womb, my husband out somewhere on the other side of the world in the shit, and little Alicia at my side.

People were depending on me to be strong, and if my mother taught me anything, it was to be strong for the people who needed her strength, so they could do what they had to do.

Growing up in rural, dirt-poor Tennessee, you had to do what you had to do, so you had to be strong, all the time.

Me, about to be a mother, in a few short months, now knew this in my very being. We were going to make it, because we had to, and I was going to see this through, and I was never going to give up on the people who needed me.

"My name's Caroline," I whispered to the girl. "Caroline O'Connor."

Caroline O'Connor, _née _Shinowski. But the girl didn't need to know my maiden name. Middletown was 'little Italy,' and they looked at Irish as barely tolerable, but a Polish girl? A 'dumb Polack,' ... which none of us were, by the way.

She didn't need to know my family history.

But I felt her head snap at my name, anyway. Did she know a 'Caroline'? _Was it her mother's name?_ I wondered.

I pulled her more tightly into my side, showing solidarity, friendship, ... love.

Her arm snaked between the smooth cinderblock wall of the shelter and my back, and she pulled me into her, too, and rested her head on my shoulder. My hand came up, instinctively, protectively, to her cheek.

She was so, so cold.

_"God!"_ I whispered at the unfairness of it all. We hadn't eaten. I didn't know when we would. Where would water come from? Was it day or night? Would we know that ever again, or would the radioactive soot keep us in the black until we all died?

I held onto this girl slumped in the shelter and my other hand rested on my little baby girl in my womb.

What would I do for these girls to make it through this?

What _could_ I do?

I didn't know. But I knew I would do whatever it took.

I fell asleep, wondering and worrying. A woman lost in this fucking nuclear apocalypse.

* * *

**A/N:** This first chapter of this little story from little `phfina is written at the request of one of my readers. The next chapter gets really interesting,

... or at least bloody, anyway.

What? Did you think Skynet was going to just _let_ everybody hang out, all cozy, in their bomb shelters? But it does take her a couple of weeks to troll outside the major cities: Middletown, population under 50 thousand, isn't exactly the bustling epicenter of the East Coast, don't you know!

p.s.: I picked Middletown, CT _not_ because Joss Whedon is a Wesleyan alum, but I bet you didn't know that, didja! ;)


	2. Static

**Chapter summary: **"This is John _kkkr_onnor. We are at war. Whatever you do, do not engage the Term_kkk_ators; they cannot be stopped by conventional weapons." Great. The first message we receive from the outside world is from a nut-case!

* * *

Static.

Static on the short-wave radio in the shelter was all we heard.

It had been two weeks now, and the generator had kicked in, finally started, so nearly the first thing we did, after the emergency lights kicked on, nearly scaring half of us to death at the sudden brightness, was to huddle around the radio.

As many of us that could. Oh, and don't you dare say the word 'shower.'

We stunk.

The makeshift latrine stunk _worse._

But static was all we heard, despite various HAM radio geeks tune, tune, tuning the radio. Frustrating as hell, but what were we going to do? Smack the radio and break it?

We had a routine now, and some semblance of order. The food locker and water reserve was guarded 24/7, as near as we could make out time, and guards had first pick of whatever was rationed for that day.

One meal a day, dry/powdered this or canned that.

And just sip-sip-sips of water.

As little as we had, there was just too many of us, and not enough supplies, and we all watched us carving into our own lifelines. We were eating hardly anything, but we saw our eating as a ticking time-bomb when one day, not too far away, when there would be no more supplies to eat.

But what were we going to do? Not eat?

Alicia didn't.

She would line up, like all of us, get her ration, and give it to me.

I refused, of course!

"Alicia," I scolded, "you need to eat!"

She just shook her head and patted my belly.

"You're as important to the future, _our_ future, as my baby!" I said.

We had onlookers. People with hungry-hungry eyes.

"Look," another child said, "if neither of you want those rats, then ..."

Alicia glared at her, then placed her rations, her _'rats,'_ by my side, then she got up, and left me.

Everybody was staring at me, and at my food.

The food. Alicia's.

I was so, so hungry.

I turned into the wall and hid my face as I ate, feeling terrible as I did so, wracked not with the sickness, but with guilt. I was eating Alicia's food, there were other hungry people.

But I ate. I was feeding two, I justified to myself.

My justification made the wretched food taste worse, if that were at all possible.

...

"Alicia, no!" I said, and picked up the food and forced it into her hand.

She shook her head.

She looked like she was going to get the sickness. She was so pale, and she was cold, all the time, and I had not seen her eat or drink. Was she checking out? Was there no more point for her? But why give up now? We were safe in the shelter, we had food. She made it in, so why was she checking out?

Why was she giving up on me?

She tried to push the food back into my hand.

"If you don't eat, and right now," I hissed, "I'm going to give this to someone who will."

That stopped her. Her eyes were a penetrating blue, and they gazed at me steadily, not looking at the other people in the shelter.

Alicia was an unloved child. Was she abused? I don't know, but I do know that nobody else liked her.

And her opinion of them was pretty clear, too. It's not like she didn't like them, it's just that she just didn't care.

She didn't care about anybody or anything; she just was in her own little world.

Which was kind of arrogant, given that there were hundreds (?) of us stuffed in the shelter that could accommodate several thousand people, but still, privacy was a thing of the past when all the space you had was your spot on the floor, and that was it.

You could lose yourself in Alicia's eyes, and sometimes I did, because when I looked at her, she didn't look away, eventually, like other people, she just looked and looked and looked right back at you, and you had to remind yourself to swallow, even though your mouth was cotton dry.

Those eyes glared at me, daring me to do just that, but, I don't know, maybe wondering if I would do just that. I would. If Alicia was going to go hungry, then so was I, and so was my baby.

I was that pissed now.

Alicia took the food back, peeled back the wrapper of something that was like a Clif's bar, if Clif's bars tasted like sawdust and then she took a little, tiny bite of it.

Then she immediately shoved it into my hands, and stalked away, her posture erect, as it always was, her pride and anger evident for all to see.

I just stood there, stunned, then furious. That little ...

My hand started to crush the foodbar in my hand.

"So, uh," one of the adults cleared his throat. He was the school principal or vice-principal or somebody up in the administration, so that made him _somebody, _"are you gonna eat that, or ..."

I stalked off myself, taking a big bite of the bar, nearly choking on it as I chewed.

Alicia wasn't all that young. She was nearly my height. I wasn't an amazon at 5'4" but, so, _still!_ Alicia was a school girl, and I was a college graduate. I was married. She could _not _just go around giving me that kind of attitude. Who did she think she was?

If we were back in Tennessee, that kind of behavior would have had me put her over my knee until she learned her lesson, because if I _didn't _do that, my mother would have put _me_ over _her_ knee until I learned how to discipline children I was responsible for.

But this was Connecticut, and I heard they send you to jail for even _thinking_ the word 'corporal punishment.'

Except this was Connecticut, post-apocalypse, and this fallout shelter _was_ prison, and we were all prisoners now.

I ate Alicia's protein bar and could barely swallow what I chewed: there was a huge, angry lump in my throat, and I ate it too fast in my anger.

_I swear to God, that kid was going to get it!_ I thought angrily to myself as I ...

"Hey, hey, hey!" I heard from across the shelter. "Hey! Somebody's on the shortwave! Hey! There's somebody on the ..."

People thundered to the ops area, running past me and I turned, surprised myself, and saw the mob swarm around the retaining wall separating the precious equipment from the mass of humanity it kept alive, and now, in contact with help.

I pushed my way through the crowd as best I could. The crowd was full of nervous energy — _there was somebody else out there! — _but at the same time hushed and still, listening for every word.

It was like a broadcast message, but unlike the emotionless voice of 'This is the emergency broadcast system' recording, this voice was filled with passion and life. And static. About every third word came through.

"This is _kkrk_ Connor. If you're liste_kkr_ to this _kkkth_, you are the Resi_kkr_nce. Listen care_kkr_lly. What I am going to be say_kkkr_ to you may sound crazy, but it's true, so _tthttk_ me, and live, or don't and die. The mach_kk_s ha_kkrr _tak_kkrssssz_. They ha_kkr _organized an atta_kkk_ to wipe us ou_kkr. _The most important thing fo_rrzzmmw_ou to do is stay alive, stay _kkvzt_dden and stay supplied. Do not, I r_kkkt_eat, do not engage the enemy. The T_kkk_ators can only be damaged by their own t_kkk;_ if you doo_awwkk_ have their weap_zzz_, you are committing suicide by _zzkkthththhh. _And if you do hav_kkkzz thhhh mmmm-mmmm-mmm fffffthzzk._ This is John Co_zzzkk kkk thhh _at war, but it is a war w_zzz_ will win. Be strong for each o_tthzz_r. John Connor, out."

Silence.

Then someone in the crowd said quietly. "Oh, my God. The first transmission we get, and it's from a survivalist nut-case?"

Then the whole crowd erupted in bedlam. Speculations, accusations, counteraccusations, 'this is what we need to do's, calls for calm.

I looked around, and spotted Alicia. She wasn't in the angry crowd, mob, almost, that I was pulling myself away from. I knew the only thing that would come out of talk like this was panic and maybe fighting. Let the crowd hurt the people in the crowd: but I had a baby to take care of.

Two babies.

Alicia was separate from the crowd, and she was obviously sulking, angry at me, I bet, for wanting her to eat something, for God's sake. She wasn't swept up by the emotion of the crowd at all, stunned that we received a message, nor stunned by what the message said, whatever it said through the static. She was just so wrapped up in her own teenaged world that she just didn't care. She lacked the perspective of what was important: her life, and what wasn't, like an imagined slight she deigned to sulk over.

I made my way toward her. She saw me. She watched me approach her.

Alicia was ...

Alicia was stunning. Thin. Malnourished. Stunning blue eyes. White, white, smooth white skin, clear of any acne, which was pretty amazing given our cramped conditions here. She had long, jet-black hair, and, if there were any criticism, it was that her hair lacked body. She was underdeveloped for her age, I guessed, but when she filled out, she would be quite the catch for any man who had eyes in his head to see her.

And albeit on the thin side, she had a poise that belied her age: both her movements and her stillness were purposeful and powerful, but also, at the same time, graceful.

She was such a willful child, but at the same time, she had the wisdom of one thousand years in her soul.

Me, on the other hand. Eh. Hic. Country girl from Tennessee. And Polish girls? Some of us are strikingly blond-haired-blue-eyed-beautiful, and some of us ... aren't.

Plain-Jane is what I should have been named, for my dun-colored hair and my dun-colored eyes, and grace? beauty? God gave those to Alicia, not me. When I walked, I lumped from A to B.

And never mind the bowling ball I was carrying around in my tummy. I felt bloated and ugly, and I never knew what Vic saw in me, but was grateful for what he saw.

Maybe he saw I had a head on my shoulders, because in my family, while he was fine with anything, I got things done.

Yeah, I'm the proverbial Proverbs 31 wife. A good Christian woman to have around the house.

A practical woman.

Well, somebody had to be, so I guess it had to be me.

I came up to Alicia.

"Hey," I said, rapprochement in my voice, "I saved you half the food-bar," and I extended it to her, the bar sticking out of the wrapper.

Alicia, slouched against the wall (looking like a God-damn supermodel striking a pose doing it, I noted), accepted the peace offering (that I had to work really hard to stop myself from finishing off, I'll have you know), wrapped the bar and put it by her side.

I blew out the air between my lips in a long-suffering sigh and slunk, ungainly, down by her side.

"Oof!" I exclaimed as I fell the last two inches to the floor. I _still_ wasn't used to carrying around an extra little person inside me, and all my movements now were becoming harder and clumsier, and I hated it. I landed hard on the floor. That hurt. It would have hurt more if I didn't have as much padding on my backside as I did. I wasn't a lard butt. I kept myself in good shape.

But I did like to snack a bit. Now and then.

Alicia look at me, becoming unlost from her own little sulky world, at that.

"'mokay," I reassured her.

She went back to her world.

"You hear that?" I asked, nodding across the shelter to the radio room and the angry crowd, now shouting at each other.

Alicia shrugged carelessly.

I wanted to say more. I wanted to say, "Jesus, that was some crazy shit!" but Alicia's (more than usual) sullenness just zapped the energy out of me, and made me a bit pissy myself.

I sighed and pulled her into me. She didn't need to hear about this crazy shit, she needed an anchor, and here I was, Mrs. Anchor.

She had grown used to me pulling her into me, my mothering, these past few weeks. She liked to pretend she was distant from it all, that she didn't care, but I knew she needed this, even though she was really good at appearing like she didn't. I knew better. She was cold and distant because she was never loved. I could relate. I grew up in a very pragmatic, very ... how do I say it? ... utilitarian environment. My dad died in the mines, and my mom raised all four of us with a will of iron. She made do, she put food on the table and made sure we got to school and stayed in school, and worked herself to exhaustion every day doing it. She loved us. That's why she did it. She just never ... expressed it.

I was going to make up for that. My family? Well, I would make it work. I would be the rock, just as my mother was for me and my brothers, but my children would know they were loved. Alicia didn't know she was loved, but she damned well was gonna, if I had any say in the matter.

And I did. I was my mother's daughter, and come hell or high water or ... fucking nuclear apocalypse, this poor little waif of a girl would know that she was loved by somebody, by me, and not because she had to do something to deserve it, but because, by God, she was a child of God, and somehow God had put her next to me in this hellhole, and that was good enough for me.

"You really need to eat more, Alicia," I worried at her.

I could almost feel Alicia fight to swallow her little self-righteous angry sigh. She made to get up and stalk away, but my grip on her shoulder tightened.

"Nyah-uh," I said bossily, "you're staying here with me. I don't want you getting hurt by getting lost in that mob!"

At this, Alicia did sigh, as if to say she could handle herself well enough, mob-or-no-mob, and maybe she could, but I wasn't letting her go, so she could just drag me around the shelter if she wanted to stomp off, and _ha-ha,_ wouldn't that be a sight: I probably weighed twice she did, the wee skin-and-bones.

Vic was black Irish. I had a feeling Alicia was too. The Irish are all boiling passion beneath the surface.

I wonder if her parents were like that, like ... abusive to her? All sullen, like she was now, and then just lashing out violently? Was that why she was closed off from the rest of the world? Because the world just hurt her whenever she looked outside herself?

It was my job to show her that this little part of the world, me, that is, was different. I knew these things took time, more than weeks, maybe more than years.

I promised myself I would take that time. If I could just save one ... _fucking ..._ soul from this hell-on-earth, then ... then I knew I could stand before God unashamed when my time came, because I had done what he wanted me to do, which was just to make one person's life worth living, even if she thought it wasn't.

"Sweetie, I'm tired," I sighed, then yawned big, and then I blushed, embarrassed at my display. But I wasn't embarrassed enough not to rest my head on her bony little shoulder and nod off.

"'Nite, 'Licia," I said.

And did I say, 'love you'? I don't remember. I was already asleep.

* * *

**A/N: **Caroline's got her bossy-mommy pants on, I'm thinkin' ;)

So I promised ultraviolence, but instead you got the John-Connor-cryptic message from me. Hey, you know me: I'm all about the slow buuuurrnnnnn... Oh. Yeah!

It's all in the setup, and even if it isn't then, well: deal.

:p


	3. Licia

**Chapter summary: **Hans and Franz are not here to pump you up. Not at all. But they were the least of my worries now.

* * *

_Thum-thum-thum._

Okay. _That _was different!

Outside our bunker, the war raged on, or it didn't, but we just didn't know. We had had that one weirdo radio message that first day, and then every day after a new one, same nut-case, slightly different message each time. Sometimes there were messages back. Sometimes people radioed their location, and that's when this John Connor-guy said don't do that because the machines would know where you were and come and find you and kill you.

Okay. Did somebody have a serious case of paranoia, or what?

We didn't broadcast back. We didn't bother. We were in Connecticut, he was in California, it turned out, and even if we were right next door ... would we want this guy's help?

I wasn't so sure, either way. Help was help, after all, just so long as he didn't ask us to drink any kool-aide, so I was conflicted on that point, but, then again, it wasn't really my concern.

_My_ concern was to keep us fed, and to keep my head down.

I tended to speak out when I found people being amazingly stupid, like: _'let's go outside and see if we can scavenge any supplies or something!'_

_Yes! Let's!_because we _so wanted_ unfiltered contaminant blasting into the shelter with me 30 weeks pregnant! Sounds like a _great idea: _us all dying a horribly slow death of radiation poisoning over weeks and weeks.

I didn't have an answer to us dying of starvation and lack of water, however, so I had egg on my face (actually: I wish!) after my little tirade.

So I kept my head down.

But nobody went out, either.

Stupid, dumbass idea! _Oh, let's go out!_ Yeah, _let's!_

Jesus.

But there it was again. _Thump-thump-thump!_ Three, _solid, _knocks against the shelter's outer portal. The guy must have had a crowbar with him, or something, and he had a swing to him, for the sound to carry all the way to the inside, underground, and fill the chamber.

Or maybe it was a squad of soldiers ... with a battering ram. Who knew?

We all just stood there for a second, shocked into silence.

"What're we gonna do?" some kid whispered.

_"Quiet!"_ One of the teachers hissed back.

"What if they have supplies?" Someone else asked.

Everybody was looking around at each other.

The principal-leader guy spoke up. "Okay," he said. "Three of us go up there and see what's up. The rest of you stay down here and keep quiet, okay?"

He looked around for approval. Heads nodded. It seemed like a good plan.

"Who's with me? Just two." He asked.

The kid who was mean to me the first day stepped right up. Another teacher-guy did, too. He looked like P.E. maybe.

"'Kay," principal-guy whispered. "Lights out, keep quiet, okay?"

There was some nervousness. 'Lights out' meant back to pitch blackness, and nobody was particularly happy about going back to that, not after we had our little generator working, restoring to us some bit of civilization and morale in this underground prison.

But what if it went South? Mr. Boss-man was risking himself and two others, and if where bad there were a lot of us, we could swarm an attacker, ... maybe.

It all seemed so risky, so terrifying.

Boss-man looked around. "Okay," he whispered. "Lights out and keep quiet. Wait for my signal, and ..."

_Thud-thud-thud!_

Whoever it was wasn't going away.

Boss-man looked around, grabbed the sole pistol in the shelter (to keep order: might makes right, you know? Thank God he never used the God-damn thing!), gave the kid a hunting knife and the PE teacher took a fire ax.

Actually, they looked pretty bad-ass. Nothing really to go on a raid or an all-out attack, but they looked like they meant business to anyone who wanted to fuck around.

Boss-man gave one more look around at us and started clambering up the ladder to the surface entrance level. The other two followed, solemn but purposeful.

There was a tugging on my arm.

Alicia.

She looked grim, determined.

"Hey-..." I began.

She pulled me by my arm, away from the ladder to the far side of the shelter, as far as we could go from the entrance to the world above.

"Alicia, what is it?" I asked.

She shook her head, and pulled me to the ground, wrapping me in her arms, wrapping as much of me in as much of her, in fact. She was the big spoon, even though I was the bigger of the two.

"Baby," I said consolingly, "what is it? Are you ... scared?"

Alicia rubbed her chin against my neck; a steady left-right, left-right: a 'no.'

She was behaving very calmly, unobtrusively, but she was totally in the protective-defensive mode.

Then it clicked.

PTSD. Abuse at home, or I don't know what her parents did. Army? State department? Maybe _she_ had been in the shit, and her defenses were kicking in, because maybe her parents made her hide when the shit hit the fan, and she made it ...

... and they didn't? And now she was doing the only thing she knew what to do to survive when she was scared, a little girl, back in the shit, being so silent, because that was the only thing that kept her unnoticed and alive.

I grasped her protective hands wrapped around me, one on my shoulder, one over my belly, and whispered quietly for her sake, "It's okay, baby. It'll be okay."

After all, this could be a rescue detachment from the the Army Reserve, right?

Her hand on my shoulder lifted and then covered my mouth. Firmly.

If she were speaking, I could just imagine her saying, calmly, _'Fine. Now shut the fuck up!'_

I nodded, obediently. I had tried reassuring her, but she was having none it, full-on in PTSD-mode. But I could play along with her, and ride this through with her, and she'd see everything was going to be fine. _Maybe_ she'd even apologize with a sorrowful look for overreacting after this episode of hers blew over, after the Army guys brought us supplies or to a better shelter, you know?

Maybe.

I'd forgive her, either way. I understood. But, also, either way, she was going to _The Lecture_ from me after this.

That was a for-sure thing, too!

The minutes ticked by. It was ... May? now, but it the cool darkness of the shelter, time stood still, day or night the lighting was the same and the air tasted the same, all the time.

Consequently, if you were waiting for something, it always took forever. You could cut the tension in the shelter with a knife.

The portal, on well-oiled hinges, wheeled opened.

I tensed. Everybody tensed. Alicia didn't tense: she was cool as a cucumber.

"Hey!"

It was the boy.

"Hey, hey! Everybody! It's okay!" There was joy and relief in his voice.

He slid down the ladder into the shelter, laughing. "God! It stinks down here!" he laughed. "Hey! Turn on the lights! It's the Army! They sent twins, swear to God! Hans and Franz, or Dolf and Rolph, IDK. But you should see these guys! Built like tanks and their rifles! Man! Sweet! They got supplies! They're gonna bring supplies! Cut on the lights already!"

The lights came up and people started crawling out from corners.

"Hahaha!" the boy laughed. "Can you believe it? They said they were looking for this John Connor-nut. They said they wanted to talk to him, and did we have any information, so I said, yeah, sure, no problem, just lemme tell everyone it's all clear, and ..."

"See!" I hissed at Alicia, "I told you that it wo-..."

_tink-tink-tink ..._

A little metal pineapple tumbled down the ladder.

_Wait, _I thought, as time slowed down to slo-mo, _isn't that a ..._

And Alicia spoke.

For the first time. Ever.

_"GRENAAAADDDDE!" _she shrieked, then she rolled over me, on top of me then she landed hard on the deck, putting her body between me and the ladder.

Then.

Pop.

The sound was so loud that I couldn't even hear it, and then I couldn't hear anything after that for a while.

So I saw it, a flash-bang of light so bright it was blinding, then smoke, acrid white-grey smoke, and then I saw people falling back from the ladder, but they fell back ... _funny, _in funny shapes, like ragdolls, falling back, mouths opened wide in 'O's of agony, and red, red, everywhere, splattering against the walls, painting limbs, and misting the air.

And I smelt the sweet smell of blood and death.

I looked to Alicia, my eyes clearing from the pure white of the explosive flash, and I looked into her eyes, ...

And I looked into death. Her dead eyes looked back at me, unblinking.

She slumped away from me, her back landing on the floor, but not with a wet thump into her own blood pooling below her, but with a scrap-scrap-scrap of metal fragments sliding over the floor as she fell that had pierced her all over her back.

She had just sacrificed herself to save me, but why? But why?

"Oh, my G..." I began, but then was interrupted by the sound of a muted thunderclap.

Boots on the ground. A man, a giant of a man, easily six feet-plus tall and nearly as wide, and built of all muscle mass, had just dropped down fifteen-plus feet from the surface entrance and landed hard onto the concrete flooring. He was dressed in Army fatigues and belt bristled with weapons, his vest pouches bulged with ammo. He looked like Vic over in Afghanistan in full battle dress.

He carried a rifle that I've never seen before. It wasn't an M-16 nor an AK-47 or anything. It was silver and was made of all sharp angles.

He looked around him, calmly, at the pandemonium, looking from person to person running, screaming, scrambling away from the blast epicenter.

Then he opened fire, firing round after round into the fleeing crowd, fleeing nowhere, and shot after shot unerringly a head shot.

And the rifle didn't go pfzing like an M-16. No, it went bzzat!

And a blob of light raced from the muzzle, and when it connected with somebody's head, their head was just gone.

"Holy Sh-..." I began to scream and roll away from Alicia, looking for cover.

And that's when a hand reached out to my shoulder and slammed me down, hard, onto the floor.

Penetrating blue eyes glared at me. "You run, you die," she snarled in a whisper.

My eyes widened in shock. "Ali-..."

My exclamation of surprise was cut off by her firm, bloodied hand over my mouth, an a very significant glare from her.

She shook her head in a commanding _no!_

I nodded, staring in amazement at her.

"Aim for the head," she said, her hand over my mouth, and then she knocked over the table we had been lying under making a makeshift barrier between us and the soldier.

The sound got his attention, but what got his attention more was when Alicia ripped off one of the metal legs of the table, and threw it across the shelter right at his head.

She threw that makeshift spear hard. I mean, like, _really_ hard. She must have been in Track, or something. The soldier adjusted his weapon's aim, and incinerated the projectile midflight, and then he was looking for who threw it, his weapon following his gaze. Totally ignoring the fleeing, maddened crowd to look for the person who had attacked him.

If she meant to take him out with her spear, that didn't work. But if she meant to distract him...

Now, that worked.

It worked on me, too. One second she was right by me, and the next second she was just gone, and the soldier, his drop down into the chamber putting him right in the middle of the shelter, was panning the whole area in a slow, methodical circle, looking for his attacker.

Alicia told me to aim for the head. With what? One of the table legs?

I stood and pulled at one of the table legs, just like Alicia did, to throw it at him.

"Hey, fucker!" I shouted, and tugged.

Huh.

When Alicia did that, it had worked way better for her. The table was a whole lot sturdier than I thought, and all I did was to upturn it, making a loud banging sound that echoed throughout the shelter.

But it did get his attention.

Uh, yeah. That.

You ever see an idiot pulling at a table leg, firmly attached to a table that was way heavier than her, trying to look badass?

Just wondering.

The man was looking right at me, his rifle leveled at my head. He pulled the trigger and ...

A blur.

Alicia slammed him using all her (nothing) weight and all her accumulated momentum to try to jostle him and knock his shot off aim.

There was no chance. She weighed next to nothing, and that guy was build like a truck, there was no way that ...

_Holy fuck!_ I thought, seeing the impossible before me.

For Alicia had just slammed into him, and the force of the impact carried them both ten, ... twenty, ... thirty feet into the retaining wall, slamming into it, hard.

The shot whizzed past me, missing me completely, and fucking _melted_ part of the wall behind me. Have you ever been to Hawaii and see rock melt and flow down like water? I have.

That's what the wall behind me became, a little molten lava stream.

Remind me not to lean against that wall any time soon.

I rolled away from the heat behind me, and looked at the fight by the ops center to see the man pick up Alicia and throw her from him like she was a toy.

_"NO!" _I screamed, but as I did, I saw her reach out just as she was picked up and thrown and grabbed a whip coiled at his belt. A whip that flashed silver in the light.

She flew, hard and fast away from him, and he was already swinging his rifle around on her to fire.

She was thrown hard, but instead of flying all the way across the shelter and slamming against the far wall, as it looked like the soldier intended, she summersaulted in the air, grasped the ladder as she flew past it and used it as a pivot point to swing around, full circle and fly right back him, feet first, a deadly human arrow, right at his chest.

Close quarters. Rifles can work at close quarters, but they lose all their advantages, because _everything_ works at close quarters, and Alicia was closing the distance that he had tried to make, flinging her from him.

She flashed out with the whip, midair. I swear to God, I'm not lying, and connected with the rifle as it fired. It missed her, killing three people, one, two, three, in a row behind her, and she pulled the whip, in a hard _jerk, _pulling the weapon from his hand.

It arced across the shelter, and ...

Okay.

And, it landed right at my feet.

It was all too much. It was all too much to take in at once. There was no way that Alicia could have planned to put the rifle right at my feet ...

Was there?

She _slammed_ into the soldier's chest hard.

_"The head!"_ she shouted at me as both of them slammed into the ops center wall, but this time it gave way and both toppled through it with a loud crash.

The whole shelter actually shook with their impact.

The man finally spoke, on the ground picking himself up even as he fell, and his voice, calm, dispassionate, echoed throughout the shelter, and it sounded ... amplified ... distorted.

_"Compromised. Terminator. Unknown. Classification. Require. Assistance."_

Alicia, bless her heart, was just full of piss and vinegar herself, when she landed on his chest and they crashed through the wall onto the floor, she just allowed the momentum to carry her forward, tumbling over the top of his head even as he picked himself up, she flipped again on the ground, landing on her feet, and extended the whip to deal him a vicious blow.

But the whip needed its own spacing to work, and the guy, thwarted by her before, played the same trick and closed the distance between them in a flash, grasping her wrist in one hand, and his other hand reaching to his belt and ...

_"No!" _I shouted.

And he pulled a dull-black army knife from his belt and gutted Alicia, right before my eyes, right in front of everybody.

"No!" I cried.

That wasn't enough for him. He used the force of his own mass and forward motion to push them both against the ops wall, which he slammed Alicia against, and then, with a wrenching twist, turned the knife in her guts.

Alicia, pinned against the wall by this huge man, her wrist slammed above her head, and her toes not even touching the ground, he had slammed into her so hard he basically lifted her off the ground to gut her, ... Alicia's eyes misted over.

She was dead before she even knew it. It was obvious to all except her and the soldier mercilessly gutting her.

_"NOOOO!" _I screamed and picked up the rifle and took aim.

I didn't even register surprise as the rifle sight unerringly picked out the man and automatically zoomed itself in on him so that it looked to me like he was standing right across from me.

He turned his head, looking toward me, but too late, because I pulled the trigger, ...

And his head was just gone.

His headless body stood there for a second, and then it slowly toppled to the side, pulling Alicia's body down with it into a heap on the floor.

_"Alicia!" _I cried, and ran toward her. I wanted to throw the rifle from me, so I could run unencumbered, but I knew that to be stupid. Alicia was dead, and whoever held onto this thing ... well, it wouldn't do to let just anybody in the shelter pick it up. An epic gesture wouldn't save Alicia, as much as I wanted it to.

It actually turned out to be a mistake, because as I ran, rifle in hand, the second guy dropped into the shelter, just like the boy had said, the other guy's twin brother.

And he was ready. As he dropped in, he was already scanning the area, and he saw me, the only person with a rifle in her hand, and he took aim at me as he landed.

_"Oh, shoo-.." _I said dismayed.

He had the drop on me, and I had shaky-nervous arms, having just killed a man for the first time in my life and having just watched somebody I loved die right in front of my eyes, and I was running, willy-nilly, to see what I could do, which would be nothing but to wail at my loss.

In short, I was a mess. This guy wasn't. It looked like he killed a lot, and was totally fine with it, too. And it looked like he wanted the rifle I held back. Badly.

There was nothing that distracted his attention, and his sure aim, from me.

Nothing at all.

He hit the ground, calmly made sure his aim was sure, and ...

_Thwhiiick._

And he was wrapped in a long, silver snake, and then, when it withdrew with a sudden jerk, he fell to the ground in three uneven, but very clean-cut pieces, half his head, half his torso, and the lower two thirds of his body. _Clunk-clunk-clunk. _One, two, three was he, the pieces that fell to the ground. His rifle pulsed a burst of light that burned itself into the ceiling overhead.

Oh, the whip had wrapped around his arms, so he was jointed at his forearms.

_Isn't that ... neat,_ I thought surreally, looking at the scene before me.

He didn't even twitch where he lay. He was just gone, and he knew it.

I looked beyond the bloody pieces of body to see Alicia, the Army knife sticking out straight out of her stomach, calmly coiling the whip into arm-length loops as she walked calmly toward me, shouldering the whip as she closed the distance between us with a steady, sure gait. She stopped by the corpse, picked up his rifle, and fired two rounds into the two unevenly-cut pieces that were his head. She shouldered the rifle calmly, bleeding profusely from the knife wound from her gut, and resumed her steady approach to me.

I probably had the stupidest open-mouthed expression on my face.

"Ah-Alicia," I whispered breathlessly.

She held out her hand for the rifle I was holding, and I handed it to her with nerveless fingers, shocked beyond reason or understanding, for who could grasp what-all happened here?

She slung the rifle over her other shoulder with a quick, careless move that had a well-practiced air to it, then regarded me steadily.

I started to blush under her intense scrutiny. I looked away from her to the body of the man she had just killed ... 'sliced-and-diced,' more accurately. The blood had run out, and round the pools that was his cut-up body there glinted not bone, but metal, and not a metal frame but solid metal, all the way through.

I gasped and looked at Alicia, down below her chest to her stomach. Blood still flowed freely, but her guts weren't spilling out. In fact, she was whole and looked unhurt, except for the viscous cut to her midsection that would have been fatal by now to anybody else.

I looked back up into her face, starting to put two and two together, her coldness, her ability to slam into the guy and knock him over, her ... well, everything!

Everything.

"You're ..." I began.

Alicia held out her hand. I looked down at it then looked back up at her. I didn't understand what she wanted now. I gave her my rifle already.

Alicia blinked slowly, frowning with a tinge of impatience. "Come with me if you want to live," she stated coolly.

Oh.

Now I understood.

She wanted me.

"Oh," I said intelligently.

Alicia didn't react, she just stood there, waiting. But it didn't look like she would wait forever.

I carefully put my hand into hers.

"What about us?" somebody said.

Oh. There was the rest of the world around us. I blinked, and looked away from Alicia's eyes. Of the hundred ... hundreds(?) ... of survivors that had come to the shelter there were less than thirty standing. Others were in pieces, or moaning on the floor, if they still could moan, dying quickly or, worse, slowly.

Alicia surveyed the scene. She was totally at ease and in command.

"This shelter is compromised," she said, "if you stay here, you will die."

That was all she had to said to them. She was in motion, pulling me along with her, going toward the ops center.

"Hey!" I said, teetering off-balance, but I quickly learned that she wasn't stopping so I had to follow along to stay on my feet.

I wondered if I fell, would she just drag me along like a sack of potatoes?

I didn't want to find out.

We passed the ladder, and a gurgling, sucking sound came from the base of it.

It was the boy.

_"Kk-kkr!" _he gasped. _"Ggkkr!"_

Alicia looked down at him. Shrapnel has sliced through most of him, and didn't stop in him, like it did stop into Alicia's back. No, it had passed through him like he were tissue paper, and all that was left was a Human Swiss cheese.

"Yes," she said, seeming to understand him. She reached to the knife in her stomach with her free hand, pulled it out, the tip had broken off inside her, and then she slammed it into his chest, cutting his still-struggling heart right in half.

_"Guh!" _He grunted, and shook. Then his eyes misted over, and he was still.

"Oh, my God!" One of the few remaining adults cried out.

Alicia didn't even pause. She just simply stood and pulled me into the ops center.

At the back of it, she slammed her fist, again and again, through the raised wooden flooring of the center, unerringly finding and then completely exposing another portal, facing downward, going deeper. She spun open the lock, and lifted the thick, solid, metal door, exposing the pitch black below.

People had crowded by the door to the ops center, watching her.

"Can we..." one ventured, "can we come with you?"

Alicia didn't even look toward the voice. She unwound the whip, looking at me significantly, and then, in a thrice she had me tied up in it, coil after coil looping around my body, tying my wrists together.

I stared at her, wide-eyed and scared, but she was utterly calm, and I took a very small measure of strength from that: that she knew what she was doing.

And besides, if she wanted to kill me, she would have no problem doing it.

She lowered me through the portal into the darkness below.

And then I realized what she had done, she had made me a harness with her whip, distributing my body weight nearly evenly across it. It was almost ... comfortable being suspended in this pit.

And then she lowered me.

And she lowered me.

And she lowered me.

I was in ink, it felt like, the black was so solid when my feet touched water, and the only light was coming from the portal far above.

It was then that she dropped me, and I fell, splashing into the water which was fetid and slimy, and then, coil after coil fell into the water, followed by a loud, solid splash beside me.

Way, way up above us, a cry: "Can't you at least just leave us the guns?"

To jump down would be suicide, because either you'd snap your neck in the fall, or you'd hurt yourself badly enough you wouldn't last much longer than that.

Alicia rose from her crouched landing, then standing, limned in light, looked down at me lying in the water. She recoiled the whip back around her shoulder, then she picked me up, and she started running.

Faster, then faster, then ...

Then I felt the wind whipping through my hair and across my face and wet clothes as she ran, splash-splash-splash through the dirty water in what appeared to be a long tunnel.

"The sewage system," I said, looking up at her face, and then gasped.

Her eyes were two tiny points of blue light, the only thing glowing in the blackness, hurting my eyes with their brightness and blinding me to everything else.

I put my hand to her cheek, to see if it were her, to see if this was real or just a really whacked-out dream. Alicia didn't react, didn't look down, she just kept running hard and fast through the tunnel, with no strain on her face from carrying me nor from the run. I put my hands around her neck as I felt her bleed out on me, her side to my side. Something shard of sharp metal was tickling my fingers, sticking out of the back of her neck, until I moved my hands slightly. It still cut into me, and I felt myself bleeding on her.

"Are you hurting?" I asked softly.

She didn't respond.

I bit my lip. "Are you ... still you? Inside? Or are you ...?"

I didn't know what else to say. What could I? _'... or was some switch flipped and now are you some killing machine that ...'_

The image of the boy, his eyes pleading, his last gasp as she killed him, superimposed itself in my mind.

I guess I had my answer.

Alicia continued to run, and then, suddenly, up ahead ahead of us, a bright ball of light formed.

I looked at it, glowing and pulsing, buzzing angrily, and I looked back up at Alicia's determined face.

"'Licia!" I cried out. Did she not even see it?

She ran, even faster, right for it.

"Brace yourself," she said, then she added factually: "This will hurt."

I screamed as she dove right at the thing. What the hell was she doing? Then she tucked my head in her arm and she wrapped her legs around me as she launched herself right into the heart of the thing.

Blinding white light.

Intense pain.

The whole Universe expanded, stood still for one second, then, it came rushing right at me, crushing me down to a point, then even smaller.

Then it all went away, and I was in utter stillness, at the center of the Universe.

And the Universe was empty.

Nothingness.

_'Licia! _I cried out, but no sound came out of my mouth.

I didn't have a mouth. I just had me.

And then.

I went away.

* * *

**A/N: **_Da-dun-DAUN! _Will somebody please tell Alicia that Caroline is _not _related to John Connor? _JEEZ!_


	4. Not Wheat

**Chapter Summary: **It's not wheat! I know it's not wheat! I'm not really here! I'm not! Oh, my God, help me! I'm so confused!

* * *

I woke, totally disoriented, from a terrible, terrible dream. I was holding my baby in my arms, and she was so, so beautiful ... didn't look a thing like me. She had jet-black hair and penetrating blue eyes, and I watched her grow, and leave me, off to slay dragons, or whatever she had to do.

My baby.

And there was nothing I could to keep her with me, and I saw her fight a demon with glowing, blood red eyes, a huge, evil man with a dull-black knife, and he pinned her against the shelter's wall, and drew back his knife and ...

And that's when I woke, a scream on my lips.

I was panting, terrified, and it was pitch black. The air was still and sterile: clean.

"'Licia?" I called.

I was on some bed, it was firm in its support, almost hard. I tried to get up.

I couldn't. My arms and legs were strapped down to a padded table.

That was the firmness. Padding.

Have you ever woken up, strapped down to a table? I haven't. Not 'til now.

I closed my eyes, pulled at my restraints experimentally, testing them.

They held firm.

Oh, and incidentally, I was naked. My wet, stinking clothes were gone, and there was just me on the table, and that was it, there was no blanket covering me.

Okay. The important thing here was not to panic. I had a level head on my shoulders, and, right this second, anyway, nobody was pointing a gun at me. In fact, in contrast to the shelter where I had been for the last, cramped month or so of my life, this room was spacious and empty. And dark.

"'Licia?" I called again.

A cool hand gently rested on my forehead for a second and stroked my cheek.

Calm, glowing blue eyes looked down at me.

Well, at least what I _think_ happened to me, happened to me.

Or else I was stark, raving mad.

There _were _for the straps on the table, and just for me. This could be a moment of lucidity in the looney bin I'd been shipped off to. I mean: nuclear attack, robots fighting each other, and a girl with soft glowing blue eyes? No sane person could come up with any of that.

I looked at my reality.

"'Licia," I said softly. "Can you please take these straps off me?"

Alicia looked down at me calmly for a second, unmoved. Thinking? Considering? What threat was I to her?

"Please?" I entreated.

Soft lighting came up, but not like the emergency lights in the shelter, all-of-a-sudden, but a light glow from everywhere like they were recessed in the walls and in the floors, and the glow gradually warmed to a tolerable level. Not bright, but not dim, either.

I looked up at Licia. She was completely naked, too.

"Oh," I said surprised.

But she wasn't. She looked down at me, implacably, her eyes glowing a soft blue.

Her skin was unmarred, as if she hadn't actually recently been in a knife fight with a monster. Maybe she hadn't. How long had I been out? I didn't know.

I knew that I was clean, however. I mean, really clean for the first time in a long time, and I was rested and relaxed, and, after being dirty for so long, I didn't know how important that was, nor how wonderfully good that felt.

Had I been out for a long time?

"Thank you for turning up the lights," I said to her politely. "Now, the straps, please?"

I put a touch of strength in my words. It wasn't an order. I wasn't angry with her. But I was telling her what was going to be happening, and soon, now, please and thank you.

I could be polite with her.

Alicia looked down at me, gazing levelly.

It was if my words passed right by her. It was if I said nothing. There was absolutely no reaction on her face. She just regarded me levelly, and did absolutely nothing.

"'Licia," I began.

But then her gaze went South on my body, and it was like blue laser beams came from her eyes and swept over my midsection.

I gasped, and made to cover myself, to protect my baby, but the straps held me firm.

Now I felt was a pretty good time to panic.

But the laser beams, or whatever they were, coming from 'Licia's eyes didn't do anything. They swept over me, once, twice, and then her eyes dimmed and softened to the blue glow of when I had first called out to her.

I looked at her. "The baby," I said in clarification. Licia gazed at me levelly. "Is she okay?" I pressed.

Licia simply looked at me.

"'Licia!" I said, losing it slightly, "please. I know you can talk. Please say something."

Her brow furrowed for a second, then she turned away from me gracefully, walked to a wall then simply strode through it. She didn't knock it down or anything. She was there. The wall was there, then she just walked through it, and she was gone.

"'Licia!" I called, angry now, "God damn it! Don't you just walk away from me like that! You come back here this instant and explain yourself! You hear me?"

The last was an angry, plaintive call, because I didn't know if she did hear me through the wall any more or not.

And I was left, all alone in this empty, featureless room.

"'Licia!" I called. "Don't ... d-don't ... leave me. Don't leave me like this!"

She had left, without explanation, which pissed me off.

But what terrified me was that she left me with out a single sign of recognition. It was like she didn't know me at all, and that terrified me, even despite of her calm, or maybe because of her calm.

I sniffled, and turned my head away from where she left, not wanting to see the walls, not wanting to be here any more.

A slight, a very slight breeze came from nowhere, and I smelled late-late Summer. It was warm-not-hot, and the breeze actually felt really good ...

... except they teased my naked skin in a way I didn't want to think about just now, thank you ...

then ... grass began to grow from the floor, and the walls disappeared and wheat, a field of golden wheat extended to the horizon and waved, very gently, in the breeze. In the distance a single, gnarled apple tree sat atop a hill and the breeze wafted the scent of sweet, slightly overripe apples to me.

"'Licia," I sobbed, "I don't want this. I waa-...I wann-..."

I stopped.

If I kept speaking, I'd be crying uncontrollably, and I couldn't do that. I had to be strong now, even moreso now than when I was in the midst of a nuclear holocaust. At least there I knew what I needed to do.

Here, I didn't have a clue, and in this isle of peace, not knowing what I was supposed to do, I was more scared than when I was ... back home, fighting those robots.

I looked over the waves and waves of wheat that wasn't there, that couldn't be there, for I was in prison. It was a beautiful prison, yes, made just for me. But it was still a prison.

But the wheat was so real!

I didn't know what to believe anymore. Nothing made sense. Right was wrong, peace was scary, and Licia ... didn't know me anymore.

Or she just didn't care.

I fell back asleep, hungry, thirsty, tired, angry, confused, lost, scared, and finally, at peace, looking over the setting sun in a softly waving golden wheat field.

* * *

**A/N: **Ooh! Da `phfina's exercising her 'descriptive writing' muscle, is she?

I am _SO_ having fun with this story. Can't say the same for poor Caroline, but that's okay, because it gets better, right? It has to!

Or. Does. It?

eheh. eheh. eheh.

(GAH! I am _so bad!_)

**ps: **Ever fall asleep over your laptop as you're about to publish the next chap, so you don't, so you do it in the morning, so you're late to work? Ever have that happen to you? I _hate that!_ Not that I'm talking from personal experience, or anything.

_`phfina rolls her eyes so hard they fall out of her head._

_`phfina_: My eyes, my eyes! Where are my eyes? _as she scrambles around the apt floor, feeling for her lost eyes that bounce way from her, rolling under the table and the refrigerator._


	5. Not Alicia

**Chapter summary: **One plus one is one more than ... not Alicia.

* * *

I woke, sensing something, and looked up at a galaxy of stars.

The moon was not in sight, and, in fact, as I looked off to the horizon, the sky blushed with predawn light.

And then the Sun, a bar of bright red-yellow-orange light broke over the horizon, and then I watched it.

The Sunrise.

Something I had never appreciated when I had it, and now, something I drank in telling myself that it wasn't real, that none of this was real, and then not telling myself anything as the Sun rose, triumphant, cresting the horizon, then crowning the sky in glory.

I looked at it, not blinded by the Sunlight, and my throat was just dry with the beauty of it, and I felt myself tear up, because the beauty pierced my heart like a physical thing, but the hurt was a good hurt. It was a lump in your throat and a tightness in your chest hurt that felt just like Love. And I felt, if I were to die here and now, I would die happy, just for this one moment, an isle of peace in the stormy seas of life that buffeted me.

From the apple tree in the distance, I saw movement in the wheat. My eyes were drawn toward it, and I saw Licia walking toward me, head held high, proud, like she always was, so God-damn graceful, like she always was, and now naked, the wheat reaching up to her hips, caressing her legs and inbetween her legs as she walked across the field toward me.

My eyes were drawn between her legs, and I saw a little 'V' of the blackest hair, flat against her pussy. A young girl's growth, just reaching puberty.

I looked up to her eyes in embarrassment, that is, away from her little, tiny v.

Her eyes were unembarrassed. She didn't even acknowledge that I had looked there, even if it were a brief glance and unintentional.

It was then I noticed a disc floating behind her as she walked. It was at the height of her shoulder blades, and it hovered behind her like it were a balloon attached to the wrist of a little girl coming home from a Fourth of July parade.

I looked back at Licia, approaching me now, an her beauty smote me. It wasn't like she owned the field she walked through, it was like she and the field were a part of mystical, harmonious whole. It was like ... she belonged here. It was like this was her home, and she was comfortable being here.

She came up to my side and the disc stopped beside her and then lowered itself to table height. There were several unrecognizable things on it. There was a translucent blob of some kind of clear jelly, fist-sized. There was also something that looked like an inch-high stack of DVDs, but it was milky brown in color, and where the blob was like a jelly, the disk appeared to be more solid.

She took the items off the tray, which lowered itself a bit more, and then she sat on it, cross-legged, facing me, sitting about level with my head.

She put the jelly to her mouth and touched her lips twice with it.

"Food?" I asked.

I could use food right about now. I mean, like: really. I swallowed hungrily.

She blinked a rapid two-blinks and then repeated the gesture, kissing her lips twice with the jelly that jiggled in her hand.

"Okay," I nodded in understanding.

She blinked slowly at this, and her brow furrowed.

I swallowed again, but this time in confusion.

"Alicia," I said nervously, "what is it? Why aren't you speaking with me? It's like we haven't spent a month together already!" I said, frustrated now. "You know me; I know you. You were silent before, yes, but ..."

I paused and looked away. "But you understood me, and I understood you, and now you're just ..."

I looked back at her. "Now you're just a ... blank. Why, 'Licia?" I asked plaintively. "Why this withdrawal?"

Alicia frowned at my tirade, putting her hand on lap, and simply waited for me to finish.

I was finished, all right. When you're talking to a brick wall, eventually you get the point and stop.

I stopped.

That didn't mean I wasn't hurt by her complete rejection of me.

It was like the past month had never happened, and she had just met a complete stranger from outer space. Or, more like: _she_ was the space alien, and I was the specimen; interesting to study for a research project, perhaps, but nothing more than that.

I looked away. "I'm done now," I said sourly. I wanted to add something along the lines of: _if you're going to give me the brush off like this, then fuck you, too._

But those words weren't the _'we're done'_ words. Those words would've been the opening salvo of the hate-hate relationship we had going here.

And I was old enough to know that.

I wasn't a self-centered, conceited little teen robot-...thingie she was. I was the mature one here, so I didn't need to start in with pissy little hate-comments.

I waited for something to happen.

Nothing did.

I looked back to Alicia. She was sitting there, still, a statue, her hand on her lap.

I looked down at her hand, and then to her face.

She smiled slightly, and I almost breathed a sigh of relief, because that was the very first time that I felt a little, just a little, something from her again.

But I didn't dare: it was like we were starting all over again, so I just waited, too.

She leaned forward and brought the jelly to my mouth, and I let it touch my lips.

She took her hand away and blinked disapprovingly.

She brought the jelly to her lips and opened her mouth. "Ahn? Ahn?" she said, almost putting the jelly in.

Oh, God! Did I ever want to scream! I wanted to say: _see! you __can__ talk if you try!_

Even though, technically, she didn't actually say anything, so talking ...?

Whatever. I didn't scream, I just nodded. Before she was touching her lips with the thing, so that's what I thought I was supposed to do, now she wanted me to eat it.

Hey, I don't know the ceremonies here, okay?

Like I said: whatever. I nodded obediently. Look at little me, strapped down: _I'll do whatever you say, 'Licia._

I tried to keep the sarcasm out of the tone of my thoughts. That worked: mostly. I mean, after all: pregnant woman with all the time in the world on her hands. Nothing better to do.

She leaned forward again and brought the jelly to my lips, so I took a bite out of it.

Mistake. It basically exploded like a water balloon, all over my face. The little bit of it that went into my mouth was water, after all.

But I thought: here I was again, egg on my face.

I sighed and murmured a discouraged: _"Just great!"_ under my breath.

Alicia didn't look all that pleased with me. But, like: I was supposed to know this ... _how?_

She dismounted the hovering disc, putting the more solid looking thing on it and frowned down at me.

I bridled at that. "If you had untied me, I could actually help, you know!" I retorted.

She looked down at me, then turned away, headed back at the tree.

"Jesus!" I shouted to her back, "don't go away mad, 'Licia!"

The follow-up to that was, _'just go away!'_ Right? That was the joke. But I wasn't in a jokey mood, and I didn't want her to go away.

I mean, it was like we were starting all over from scratch, but with her here at least we could start over, or start to start over. Her just leaving like that so pissed me off, because she was taking me totally for granted _and_ she wasn't giving me _any_ chance, _whatsoever,_ to break through to her again. Not that I was making any great strides, anyway, but, you know? Just _Jesus!_

A hand rested gently on my forehead.

_"Jesus Christ!" _I cried out in shock. I looked to my right, and there she was, Alicia, resting her hand on my forehead, then bringing her hand to my wetted cheek.

"Jesus, 'Licia!" I said. "Scare me to death, why don't you!"

I looked back to my left to the gnarled apple tree where she had just departed, then looked back to her on my right, confused. "But didn't you just ...?" I said, blinking rapidly. Didn't she just leave the opposite way? What did she do? Run back around the other side, full tilt? Just like she did to that robot-guy?

Did that make her a robot-girl?

Alicia frowned down at me, removing her hand from my face, looking displeased at the wetness of her hand.

I frowned back at her. What, did she expect the light kiss of a breeze to dry my face in the matter of seconds she was gone?

She lifted my head slightly and rested my head on her hand relieving me of the wetness below.

"Thank you," I said up to her, but she wasn't looking at me at all, she was looking over me toward the old apple tree.

My voice died in my throat as I looked in the direction she looked.

And I looked, and I saw her walking back to me.

I swallowed in shock, and turned my head so quickly, I was afraid of getting whiplash. But she was still here with me cradling my head in her hand, and, I looked back, she was still coming to me from the tree, striding gracefully, purposefully toward me.

I looked back up to my right, at Alicia, cradling my head, and looked to my left, to Alicia, now standing beside me. She had brought a pure white square of cloth in one hand, and a new jelly in the other. She began gently patting down my face.

My stunned face.

I shook my head, trying to clear it.

She, the cloth-girl, stopped patting my face, and withdrew her hand. She began to offer me the jelly, but I shook my head again.

"No," I said. I blinked at them, twins, identical. Both of them looked exactly like Alicia.

I looked between both of them.

"You're not Alicia," I said to the girl holding the back of my head off the padding.

She didn't react at all. She just looked right back at me.

I looked at cloth-girl. "You aren't, either," I accused.

Her eyebrows clouded momentarily. She blinked once but then did not otherwise react.

I took a deep breath and tried to calm myself. Nothing seemed to affect them. Maybe if I were calm I could reach through to them somehow.

But it was hard to feign calm with a sense of dread welling up in my chest.

My thought: why wouldn't Alicia be here, instead of her ... her whatevers? Her clones?

The thought I didn't want to think was: she would be here, wouldn't she? Unless...

Unless she couldn't be.

Cloth-girl brought the jelly toward my lips.

I shook my head. "No," I said.

She paused.

"No," I said more firmly. "Where's Alicia?"

Cloth-girl looked at me quizzically, then she seemed to shrug mentally and pressed the jelly to my lips.

I turned my head away. _"NO!"_ I shouted.

Her hand followed my head, so I jerked my head away from the jelly, which forced me to look right at her. _"No!" _I shouted right at her. "I don't want that! I want 'Licia! Where is she!"

She paused, looking at me.

A few strands of her jet black-almost-indigo hair fell out of perfect place and hung between us. She was looking right at me, silently, and doctor-girl just stood there, erect, looking at me, too, but even more aloof, if that were possible.

_"Don't you speak English?" _I screamed, _"Jesus! What the fuck's wrong with you fucks? I don't wan' you! I wan' 'Licia! NOW!"_

This stopped them. Cloth-girl took away the jelly. They were both looking at me, silently, but somehow I got the feeling they were ... I don't know ... conferring?

"'Licia," I said to them. "You know? The one that looks just like you and you," I jerked my chin to each in turn. "I don't want you, you unnerstan'? I want _her, okay?"_

Cloth-girl blinked twice, rapidly, completely blank, but then she stepped away, and stood still, her hands by her side.

"Jesus fucking Christ," I cursed sullenly, "for robots or whatever you sure are the dumbest fu-..."

But then I stopped because I felt a change.

The air in front of us shimmered, then rippled like running water, then everything in front of us darkened to pitch.

I gasped and looked at cloth-girl.

Both she and doctor-girl were looking back at me, unperturbed, but then a bright flash of light distracted me from them watching me like sentinels. I looked at the blackness in front of me, and saw that big ball of light form in the darkness, sparkling and crackling with energy.

"Oh, God, no!" I said. "Not again!"

But instead of pushing me toward it, out of it came movement and solidity, the form resolved into a small shape, carrying a small shape.

And those shapes hardened into two, little, tiny people.

"'Licia!" I called.

For it was her, battle-scarred, but unbowed, carrying ...

Oh! she was carrying me!

"Oh," I said, embarrassed, realizing now that this was like a playback.

Alicia stepped out from the light, carrying me in her arms, and I was totally slack, totally out.

More movement. One, two, then ten, then twenty forms approached her as the light died to pitch blackness.

"Hey!" I said.

The 'light' (or the lack of it) adjusted itself on the playback, and everything was red and shades of red. I was a little red flame, and ... _inside_ me was a little red flame, pulsing and kicking.

My baby!

My eyes widened at that.

Much duller red forms moved about. One of them came to us, Alicia and me, and took me from her and carried me away. Then other forms started closing on Alicia.

The focus of the playback was on me, and where I was going.

"Hey!" I called out. "Hey! Hey! No! I don't want to see me. What happened to Alicia!"

The view kept following me.

"No!" I said. "Alicia! I want to see her, got me?"

I looked to doctor-girl.

Maybe she had some sense.

Doctor-girl looked at me. "Alicia!" I said, and jerked my chin to the blackness in front of me. "What happened to Alicia! Where is she?"

Doctor-girl looked right back at me.

I threw my head back. _"ARRRGH!" _I snarled. This was just so God-damn frustrating! I saw her, but now that was only worse because I had no idea what happened to her.

I looked back at doctor-girl. "I want to see Alicia; do you get that?"

She didn't get it.

I ground my teeth.

Okay. Talk to her like she's a two-year-old then. "Ah-lee-sha," I enunciated, pointing my chin to doctor-girl, then jerked my head to the screen-not-screen. "I want to see Alicia, okay?"

I looked back at doctor-girl.

She blinked once, emotionlessly.

I sighed, despairing. Shouting didn't work. Calm didn't work. Talking to them like they were the idiots they were didn't work. _Nothing worked!_

Then the image changed.

It was blacks and reds and machines, and coils and grid-work and madness.

If there were hell, it would be this place.

Alicia lay on a table, just like mine, but on her stomach, and her back looked like a pin cushion for grenade shrapnel. I winced in sympathy, looking at her back.

Her eyes were facing toward me, but they were unfocused and vacant, and she was utterly still, not even breathing.

"'Licia," I called softly, hoping she'd hear me.

No response.

She was surrounded by four of 'hers.'

'Hers.' Her Stepford sisters.

And they were busy. One approached her head, interposing herself between me and Alicia.

I squinted and moved my head, trying to see around her to Alicia. "Better door than window, damn it!" I muttered angrily and was about to say something to doctor-girl when the girl in the view reached above her head and pulled down a long arm with a toothed-wheel at the end of it. Then ...

"No!" I whispered, shocked.

Then I was glad I couldn't see, because blood flew everywhere as an angry buzzing sound filled that entire area and set my teeth on edge.

I was no longer craning my neck to see. I just watched, open-mouthed, as Alicia's head was cut into.

The girl stepped away, and there was a big hole in the side of Alicia's head, like she had just been stabbed through with a wedge.

"Wh-...wh-...why?" I asked helplessly.

She was fine. Alicia was fine! Why did they ...

Two other girls approached her body as the first girl walked away, walking right past me, holding a bloody mess of a tuft of Alicia's hair and a something sticking out of it that I didn't quite see.

The two girls reached up together and pulled two huge armatures from overhead and put Alicia's hands into them, then slid the devices up, all the way to her elbows.

It was quick and efficient. They stepped away, the devices turned, and Alicia's arms ...

Alicia's arms snapped right off.

Her body didn't even move. She was just gone.

Alicia was gone, and they were piece-parting her.

Those fucking bastards. They fucking ... They ... they fucking ...

I looked away.

"No," I whispered. I looked at cloth-girl. "No, I don' wanna see no more."

Wetness, on my cheeks.

I sniffled.

The two girls approached Alicia again, one held down her body, firmly, into the table, and the other, knives in her hands, started dragging them across her back, cutting out ...

Oh, my God, ... cutting out _steaks_ of her flesh.

"Stop," I begged. "I g-get it, okay, you fu-... you fu-..."

I squeezed my eyes shut, wanting to unsee what I just saw, but knowing I never could.

"J-jus, just..." I gasped. "Just leave me alone."

I sobbed. "Just ..." I opened my eyes and looked at Alicia, looking back at me, implacably.

Alicia.

Not Alicia.

"Just..." I tried to swallow. I couldn't.

"You," I said. "You _fucking bastards!" _I was suddenly screaming. "You ... She was _fine! And you had to ... you had to ... Why did you kill her? She ... All she did was ... God!" _I screamed. "Fuck! _FUCK! You fucking ... She was ... oh, my God!"_

I was crying now. "Oh, my God," I said, "you ..."

I couldn't go on.

Cloth-girl looked back at me, and she was just simply ... puzzled. Like, _what's her problem? It's not like this doesn't happen every day._

Or something like that. She just didn't get it. She just didn't get what she showed me was the most terrible thing in the world.

"Ju-just go!" I said sadly, sorrowfully, angrily, and now totally burned out. "Just ... just leave me alone."

Cloth-girl approached me, offering the jelly to me, bringing it to my lips.

I jerked my head away, and now I was looking at doctor-girl.

Everywhere I looked, Alicia was there. Everywhere I looked, Alicia was no longer there.

And never would be.

_"NO!" _I screeched. _"Leave me alone!"_

Doctor-girl looked at me, and her eyes started to blue.

_"NO!" _I screamed. "Just go! I hate you. _I HATE YOU! JUST ... FUCKING ... GOOOOOH!"_

Doctor-girl looked down at me for a moment.

"Ju-just," I swallowed and sniffled, "jus-just-just go! _Please!"_

She took the cloth from cloth-girl, who left.

"Just go!" I said.

Doctor-girl put the cloth under my head, then, she, too, bend her head to look down at me intently for a moment.

Why wouldn't she just up and go, too? I'm not some lab specimen to observe.

Cloth-girl was back. Doctor-girl took something from her and put it on my arm.

I felt a bee sting. It hurt, and then it didn't.

"Is it my turn now, you fucking bastards?" I asked, my voice filled with bitterness. But a calm and numbness began to wash over me, and then I really didn't care if it were my turn or not.

Cut me up. Fine. I don't care. I hope I made a terrible mess as I sprayed my blood all over them.

Fucking bastards-robot-bitches-cunt-motherfuckers.

Then I felt Doctor-girl put my head down.

And then, a thought almost made me seize up: _my baby._

And then ... nothing.

* * *

**A/**_just so you know_**/N:**So, like, yeah. This story isn't a story you're expecting. It's not a T3-story, because T3 is _not_ canon. Never saw the movie, never will, and the TSCC-peeps very clearly stated T3 has nothing to do with TSCC, nor even the Terminator-set; so, if you're looking for T3, look for a story that has the T3-tag on it. This story ain't in it, so don't look here for it. Also, have you watch the Terminator movies? Don't you remember how confusing it was for Sarah Connor? She didn't get anything until the end, after she took a bite out of Reese. Not before. She was confused, and the only explanation that worked was from a madman, claiming to be from the future.

And she didn't believe him until the Arnold knocked over a police station, looking for her in it.

As for Terminators on J-D, well, in TSCC, weren't there a bunch of them? Collecting Coltan, to form the terminator army right at J-D day, so, then, isn't it conceivable that a terminator, or two, or more than two were, in fact, ready to rumble on J-D? Because, in TSCC, they were.

"Oh, but in T3 there were no Terminators on J-D, so they couldn't attack the shelter. You fail, `phfina."

Ah, so TSCC had two seasons of peeps just _pretending_ to be Terminators, because it was the cool thing to do. Got it.

Think about it. TSCC is about a mom and her boy, knowing the future, and struggling through the present. Most everybody else was lost, except Cameron. Lost, and when confronted with this reality, they were either in denial, scared out of their minds, ... and then usually very dead.

This is the feeling for the rest of us in TSCC. We think we know what's going on, but, in reality, we don't have a fucking clue.

If you think you know what's going on in TSCC, as a participant, then you have another thing coming. Unless, of course, you're God, then you get to set the table of engagement, and all the rules of play, because you already have all the answers.

I invite another approach. Approach it freshly. What does Caroline know? Nothing. She knows absolutely nothing. Where/when is she now? How the hell would she have the answer to that? So how do you expect to know everything, reading this story? This is a story about Caroline and Alicia ... or, now, not-Alicia, because Caroline just watched her be piece-parted.

This story does not meet your expectations, because it's not a T3-story. It's a TSCC story, as interpreted by little `phfina, but it's also canon and researched and thought-out.

I invite you to do something that you don't have to do with most other stories on this site. I invite you to think this thing out, because Caroline is telling this story, and she doesn't have all the answers for free. Nor do you. But you can read and think and come up with answers, or come up with questions.

And having questions, and having to think, reading a story ... isn't that a good thing? Or do you want things fed to you on a silver spoon, your cheerios and your warm milk, nice and soft and predictably predicable?

Do you want it all with the plot so rigid it's painted into the corner from the first chapter? Knowing the conclusion to the story from the very third paragraph?

Or do you want to take a risk, and read this story for what it is, not for what you expect it to be?

Isn't that what life is? Living the questions that don't have answers given to you for free? Because if they are, then they aren't 'given,' are they? They're forced down your throat. And that's not living, is it?

I'm not giving you a free answer to that question, either.

**ps: **Be gentle with me, my dear readers. I'm too fragile to be told 'oh, this and this because I know the answers and you don't.' I'm just too ... fragile to face obstinacy. And my life is too short to be angry over ... something beautiful and loving-kind. I don't have time in my life for anger, mine nor yours. I only have just enough time to love, and to be loved.

That is something I can try to do, with all my heart.

I love you.

`phfina


	6. Bitter Comfort

**Chapter Summary: **I wake up from my drug-induced sleep on an operating table with the four who disemboweled Alicia standing around me, just like they did when they ...

I guess it's my turn now.

* * *

I woke, cotton-mouthed and confused, ... and anguished.

I knew something, something terribly terrible had happened, but what?

Then, it hit me.

_"Alicia,"_ I whispered sadly, and tears fell from my eyes.

And I wish I could drink them, my bitter, salty tears, to clear the clouds stuffing my mouth, to ease the agony that was my throat.

"Oh," I said, shocked out of my sorrow, taking in my surroundings.

I was surrounded by four of her. North, South, East, West, or so I guessed, or, at my head and feet, and to both sides of me, more accurately.

Just like those bastards had surrounded Alicia when they ...

When they ...

I couldn't look away from them, and they were looking right at me. Naked as the day they were born, which was never, right?

I looked at them, looking at me impassively. They were just waiting there, surrounding me, waiting for what?

"Is it my turn?" I asked, bitter and angry.

They didn't move. They didn't flip me on my tummy, squishing my baby. They didn't do anything.

"Look," I said, getting angrier, "I don't know why you did that to 'Licia. She didn't do _anything, _okay? But ... you can't do that to me. I'm ..."

I broke off and tried to look away. No matter I looked, though, one of them was right there in my field of vision.

I closed my eyes for a second and tried to collect myself as best I could.

"I'm pregnant," I opened my eyes and looked at them, looking for understanding; trying to convey the importance of what I was saying. "You can rip me up like that, and I'll die, but you'll also be killing the life inside me, my little girl, and I won't let you do that. Do you understand me?"

They looked back at me impassively.

There was nothing there in there eyes. No understanding; no nothing, just ...

I've had better conversations with Vic when he came back from Afghanistan after his first tour. He was all sullen and angry, but he tried, at least he tried to listen to me, even if he weren't in a place where he could talk about what he saw and what he went through.

And then the Army shipped him right back. He was home for less than six months and then he was gone again.

And they expect a marriage to survive that, survive me having to take care of everything at home, the bills, the everything, and then I'm pregnant and Vic is on the other side of the world and skype is supposed to make it all okay?

It wasn't okay. And now Vic was overseas, and I was ...

I was I don't know where I was, surrounded by the Stepford quartet, just standing there over me, like I was some lab specimen.

Maybe I was some lab specimen.

But if they would unstrap me from this table, and I'd show them what this lab specimen could do to their faces!

But they didn't unstrap me. They just stood there.

Then.

In the distance.

Two of them, they 'walked,' into ... 'here.'

It was really, really weird. It was like they stepped into 'here' from 'there.' They, like, appeared, but it was like they faded into here from wherever they came. They side-stepped, the two, one to the left, one to the right, and two more appeared.

Then two more, ...

Then two more, ...

Then two more, ...

Then ... they just kept coming and coming, and soon, before I knew I had to count them, I lost count, there were so many of them. In the shelter, there were hundreds of us, and this ... I don't know, there must have been about a hundred of them, perhaps a bit more ... a _bit more?_ of the evil Stepford fembots? But they were at such distance from me, that it felt like only a small crowd.

But they weren't crowded together, they were evenly spaced, and they were just watching me.

"Oh, great!" I remarked dryly. "An audience? For little, old me?"

But then I stopped, because, at some invisible command, they were in coordinated motion.

I mean, like, they were machines, right? Or something? But they _looked_ like teenaged girls, so ... almost frail, harmless.

But when they moved, they moved with a purpose, and there was no imprecision to them. They made the Army drill formations look sloppy and amateurish, but they weren't marching, either, they were simply walking, in motion ...

And they formed a big, big circle.

Around me.

My throat went dry. Actually: it went dri_er._

I swallowed and looked at the four murderers who butchered Alicia. I knew it was them. I _knew _it. They didn't look vicious. They looked cool and unperturbed.

And that was totally unnerving for me.

I mean, if they wanted to torture me, or if I were some prisoner-of-war, then there would be something I could latch onto, something I could understand and hate or use against them, maybe. But there was no care in any of them, there was just utter calm from them.

The suspense was killing me, but there was nothing I could do about it.

I bit my lip, and cursed under my breath: _"God damn it!"_

I wanted to scream at them. _'Do me! Do me, you fucking bitches!' _just to get this terrible waiting, this terrible unknowing over with. Just to have _something_ happen!

But I was scared that maybe that was exactly what they were waiting for: a signal from me, so they could start cutting me up, and it would be all my fault.

And I had more than me to think about now. I could sacrifice myself, but I had to be strong than I could be, for the little life in my womb, just waiting to be born. And, I don't know, maybe they wanted to cut her out of my womb, and raise her as their own? Toy with her, so that the only world she would know would be theirs, and then, when she was old enough to know, and to trust them, they'd do her like they did Alicia and like they were going to do me.

I couldn't let that happen. I couldn't stop that from happening, obviously, if that's what they wanted to do.

But they weren't going to break me and make me start the ball rolling. If it were just me, I'd've cracked under this pressure.

But it wasn't me anymore, and it wasn't my life to throw away.

These were teenage girls, or they were pretending to be that, and I was a teenage girl once. I was mature for my age, but I saw it all in school, the selfishness, the self-absorbtion, the pitilessness and cruelty, the pettiness, the trivial concerns. I didn't have a lot of friends in high school, because I knew that there was more to life than high school and who was the queen bee. I wasn't an outsider, but I went to school, kept my nose clean, and did my assignments.

I wasn't a popular girl in school. And I didn't go to many parties. Like: I went to one, and I knew I was the wet blanket there.

Even my parents worried about me, encouraging me to lighten up and have fun, and you may think that's sad when your parent encourage you to get a life.

But I had my life, and it wasn't going to be the social scene of a high school of a nowhere town in Tennessee.

Gatlinburg, Tennessee. Have you heard of it?

Maybe you have because of the tourism, but what about the local inhabitants? Meaning: me.

I went to college, and that's where I met Vic, and he was exactly the man I needed in my life: strong, steady, purposeful ... not the most exciting person in the world, but the kind of man I could depend on, and the kind of man our children would look up to.

Vic and I were ... 'countercultural.' We didn't party hard in school. He wasn't wild and crazy, and, yes, there are people in the world like that, ... like: wanting to do something with our lives that meant something. Set down roots, rebuild America.

Yes, there were people like us. People who cared.

And I would have said: 'None too late.'

But ... it looked like we were too late. There was no more America.

And there was no more Vic.

And now there was no more Alicia. Just her clones, eyeing me for the grand finale, it looked like.

There was some movement by the old apple tree.

Alicia-not-Alicia approached our little party, her tray following along behind her.

I felt my stomach cramp up. I almost felt the baby beg, almost suck harder at the chord attaching her to me.

God, I was so hungry!

The girl to my side stepped to stand beside the girl at my feet, and tray-girl walked right up to me, almost ... proudly, like she knew what she was doing.

I hated her for it. I hated them all.

And my stomach begged me to beg her to have food on that God-damn tray.

She stood beside my head.

The girl on the other side of me stepped to my feet, and doctor-girl showed up, she pursed her lips and looked disapprovingly at the servant-girl.

And, suddenly, I wanted to defend her.

"Wasn't her fault," I mumbled at doctor-girl, but that didn't mollify her. Her look was impassive, but it looked like servant-girl was going to catch hell for this, for not feeding me, even though it was me who didn't take the food before.

The tray came up beside servant-girl and ...

I _tsk_ed to myself.

I was going to have to start calling them something. 'Doctor-girl' and 'servant-girl' or 'cloth-girl' or whatever was getting old in my mind.

But what to call them? 'A' and 'B'?

Wouldn't that be just peachy! Wouldn't that just drive the wedge of hate deeper between me and them!

Isn't that what I wanted?

But they were taking care of me. Kind of. And keeping me restrained. And drugging me.

... And ripping Alicia to shreds.

I had a million reasons to hate them. And although I saw Alicia take down that big robot-guy, maybe these other ones were in some kind of alliance with them, and maybe that's why they killed her.

But why keep me around then? I was just as guilty. I shot that one guy in the head.

None of this made sense.

What to call them?

Servant-girl took ...

Damn it! What do I call her?

_Definitely not '_Alicia.' She wasn't, and she never would replace her. But what did that leave me with?

I didn't know.

She, the girl I was looking at, took a fist-sized jelly from the tray. I saw that there were three of them there now. She showed it to me, and then she brought it to her lips.

"I got it," I said. "I understand." And then I added: "It's water. It's like water. I know."

She glanced at me, taking in my words, or, more like: hearing that I was making sounds, because no understanding crossed her face.

Then, she tilted her head back, all the way back, and squeezed the jelly gently, and then she puckered her lips, and began to suck at the distended jelly, every so slightly.

I saw that the jelly had like a translucent membrane, and the water inside flowed into her mouth, and she sucked and swallowed, sucked and swallowed, sucked and swallowed until the water inside was all gone, and then the membrane itself lost form, and it dissolved and flowed into her mouth.

"Oh," I said, awareness dawning.

It was like ...

Okay: it was like she sucked at a tit, okay? And I blushed at the thought, but there was really no other way to describe it, okay?

She looked back down at me and blinked a couple of times rapidly.

I felt my eyebrows cloud.

"Are you ...?" I asked. "Did you ... well, you're like a robot, right? I mean ... did you really drink the water, or ...?"

I didn't know the 'or.' I just saw her drink the water. But, so: did that make her not-a-robot, or was she ...

I was so confused. Alicia took a knife to the gut without even blinking, and she hardly bled from that, so, you know: robot-girl. But ... do robots drink water? Wouldn't that make them rust inside or something? Cause them to short-circuit?

Servant-girl wasn't short-circuiting. Instead, she grabbed another jelly from the tray and showed it to me.

My stomach growled and cramped up at the same time.

"Okay," I said, "I've got it."

She blinked again, and put the jelly to her own mouth.

Okay: this, right here, was torture: showing me drink, but not giving it to me.

She 'kissed' the jelly with her puckered lips and held it out for me to see again.

I nodded. "I got it. I understand."

She blinked again, and brought it to her own lips again, demonstrating a third time.

"Oh, for God's sake!" I exclaimed in irritation. "Just gimme the damned thing already!"

That stopped her kissing the jelly. She put it back on the tray and put her hands down to her sides and waited.

I bit my lip, hard, and looked away.

"Okay," I said softly. "I'll be good now, okay? May I please have that ... whatever it is to drink ... like, now, please?"

The girl waited a moment.

My stomach complained louder.

She picked up the jelly and held it up to me.

I bit my lip and nodded, watching her, trying not to overreact and scare her away from giving me it.

She smiled, very, very faintly, and came up to me, cupping the back of my head in her free hand, lifting it up off the table, and she brought the jelly to my lips.

This time I didn't bite into it. I followed her example and grabbed onto the jelly with my lips and very gently started to suck.

The water flowed into my mouth, and I swallowed it quickly as I continued to suck.

The jelly was gone quickly, and my parched throat and empty stomach thanked me over and over again for being a quiet, obedient little fuck, just this one time, so they both could get the blessed relief of the cool water.

'Quiet' and 'obedient' were _not_ hallmarks of mine, but I guess I could play along, as long as there was something to feed me at the end of it.

I looked up at her again, the jelly now gone.

She reached to the table and picked up the brown disc. She took a bite out of it. It didn't _crunch,_ it more like ... _crumbled, _like you'd expect caked brown sugar to do. She opened up her mouth, showing me that it had congealed into a paste, then she closed her mouth again and made an obvious show of swallowing.

She showed me the disc.

I nodded.

Her lips twitched upward, her only reaction, but so significantly different than this place desolate of emotion that I noticed it. It screamed out to me that she approved, and was being kindly about it, even though her smile was just a wisp of nothing on her face, and it was gone as fast as I noticed it.

She came to me again, propping up my head, and then held the disc out to me.

I took a small, tentative bite, and started to taste in my mouth as I chewed.

It tasted, if anything, worse than the rations back in the bunker. It tasted like nothing, like cardboard and styrofoam, and it sucked all the saliva in my mouth, and kept sucking, trying to suck my throat closed.

I opened my eyes in alarm, and tried to whine.

My throat was totally closed off, and my mouth was full of shit and sand: that's what it tasted like and felt like inside my mouth: gooey and yucky.

Alicia-not-Alicia seemed a bit surprised, because I couldn't breathe around this, whatever it was, and I was starting to panic.

She didn't. Or maybe she did. But she acted quickly and surely, grabbing the other jelly and squeezing some of it directly into my mouth.

Now my mouth was full of water ... and that brown stuff that had the consistency now of shit and sand, and didn't taste much better than that, if at all.

It took a really, really long time for me to slosh all that around in my mouth and swallow it, bit by bit.

My mouth didn't thank me; my throat wasn't too happy about it, either, but, as it went down, I felt it, like, expanding to fill my tummy, and I felt my tummy attack it with relish!

And that was just one bite!

The girl brought the disc to my mouth again, but I shut my mouth tight and shook my head.

She was patient; she waited.

But I shook my head again, and said, "No, I ... mmph!"

That's when she shoved the dick in my mouth.

Shit.

I mean she shoved the _disc_ in my mouth.

In my defense: they sound the same.

Kinda.

I took a small bite and chewed at the gruel, trying to move it around in the front of my mouth, protecting my throat from getting sucked dry by the stuff, whatever it was.

I didn't have much success, but whatever-her-name-was (or would be, I guess) was ready with the water-jelly, bringing it right up to my mouth after I took the bite.

I sucked at it greedily, just as I imagined my daughter would take to my breast after her first screaming breaths of air...

... If she and I were ever to make it that far. They were feeding me, but with four of them around me at the ... operating table? Why would they feed me before they ripped me apart? Aren't you supposed to fast before a surgery? Like, for twenty-four hours? So why were they letting the tray-girl feed me?

God, I've really got to think of a name for her!

It was a slower process this time, the sandy, grainy 'food' (if it could be called that) mixing in my mouth with the jelly-turned-to-water, and I swallowed it. There really wasn't a process of chewing at all. I just took a small bite and the thing exploded in size in my mouth, and I sucked it down, bit-by-bit. I used my tongue to move the stuff around in my mouth a lot, mixing it with the water so it could get dissolved enough so I could swallow something manageable. This would get old, fast. But what were my alternatives?

I hoped I didn't choke to death on this stuff.

I could really only manage the two little bites: it filled my stomach quickly, or I just didn't have the appetite for it, but I had been so hungry before, and now I wasn't.

I guess I've proved wrong that 'to somebody starving, everything tastes great!'

This stuff did not taste great. But I didn't complain, either. That wasn't in my nature. Nor was it in Vic's: whatever I put in front of him, he ate. Sometimes I tried to puzzle out from him his preferences, but all I ever got from him was that he liked whatever I fed him.

Vic was the epitome of 'low-maintenance,' so I really didn't have a leg to stand on to complain, so I didn't. I just tried to match his calm with mine.

It did make our reunion after his first tour to Afghanistan underwhelming.

But that's what Vic was: underwhelming. He was kind and loving and steady, and what more could I ask for in a man? He wasn't perfect, but compared to most the rest of the world, he was more than slightly above average.

An average guy: Vic, and so ... and I had to laugh at myself, plain-jane me was his slightly above average girl. We were perfectly matched.

I wondered if he had his sights set on a blond bombshell, or an exotic Asian chick, or a red-head, and instead he just settled for me.

I worried about that sometimes. I worried about him overseas, because they came out with book about women serving over there, and they asked them really personal questions, like, 'did you cheat on your spouse?' And they all were like: 'Hell, yeah! Everybody does!'

'Hell, yeah! Everybody does!' they said, to a woman.

And I wondered if Vic were cheating on me when he was over there, with some ... enlisted Army girl who was blond and cute and young and made his coffee for him: 'Did you want some sugar with your coffee, sir?' she'd ask him sweetly and bat her eyelashes at him, knowing exactly how a woman can bend a man to herself, claiming him as hers as he thought he was being all manly, taking her.

I wondered that, sometimes, and all it did was make my stomach burn and make me sick with worry.

But when Vic came home, there was not one moment of hesitation when he hugged me at the airport, and he was genuinely happy to see me, and him, holding me, holding my hand again, all my worries evaporated like the silly-girl worries that they were.

And I was so angry for myself for doubting him, and I made extra sure to make it up to him, all my worry that he didn't know about.

And ... well ... you know. He went right back overseas, it seemed like to me, and left me back home with the fruit of our love growing in my belly.

I sighed, and wanted to comfort our baby in my womb. Sometimes I would rub her from the outside, and it felt so wonderful, me holding her inside me. I felt so connected to her.

And now she was the only thing left to me in the world, because none of the rest of this made sense.

The girl offered me the brown disc again, and, once again, I shook my head back-and-forth in a _no_-ing gesture.

She seemed unsure. There was fully three-quarters of the fist-sized disc left.

But I was just so full.

"No, really," I said firmly, but trying to reassure her at the same time. "I'm, like, stuffed. Really, I can't eat another bite."

She stood beside me, offering the disc to me, so I shook my head _no_ again.

She blinked, uncertain.

I looked over at Dr. A-... whatever. "I'm full," I said. "I think I'll hurt myself if I eat more."

It was like, in my mind, Dr. A and Servant-Girl-B. Working definitions, but servant-girl seemed to defer to the doctor-person-robot-whatever, so the doctor seemed like the alpha ... you know: alpha-female.

Whatever.

The doctor did look at me in concern when I addressed her, and she put one hand to my head, and her hand was cool on my forehead, and she put a hand on my belly, and then looked down at me, scanning.

Her eyes blued, and the light swept from the top of my head all the way down, then all the way back up again.

"Right?" I said. "I can stop eating now. I'm fine."

Doctor-A removed her hands and stepped back, giving room to the other four and the servant girl, who then, without even a look from the doctor, stepped away, the tray following her as she left.

"Thank you for lunch, or whatever!" I called after her.

And, did I imagine it? Or did she pause for just a fraction of a second in her stride? She didn't turn to acknowledge at all, but I thought I saw the slightest hesitancy in her.

Did she want to stay, feeding me? Was that her only job in life?

I looked over to the doctor, and looked at her intently. "So," I said, "you know there's a baby in me. A baby girl, right?"

She didn't change expression at all, she just turned and left.

"You have to tell the others!" I called after her. "They can't just rip me apart like they did to Alicia, you hear me? _You hear me?"_

She walked past the line of the other not-Alicia lined up around me some distance away.

Then she simply faded into nothing.

Where she passed by the other girls, I saw another one, like three girls down, take a step backward, and simply disappear into thin air. I looked around in askance at the four girls surrounding me, but they didn't even notice. Then, a few seconds later, the girl returned ... no: maybe it was a different one.

I looked around at the circle. They all, all one hundred or so of them, looked back at me, impassively.

"Great," I said sourly, then called out sarcastically: "I hope you didn't pay a lot for the tickets!"

If it had been windy, and the wind died to nothing, their response would have been quieter than that.

"Just great," I muttered under my breath.

I hated being watched. I didn't know what I was supposed to do. Where they looking at me to observe my behaviors? Then how was I supposed to behave?

They really should have picked somebody way more interesting than me! Because: boring? I'm as boring as it gets!

Then I saw it. Another part of the circle, a girl stepped back and faded away, then, seconds later, she, or another one just like her, faded into the world and stepped right into the spot she, or the one who just left, had just been.

I looked at the four angels surrounding me. What were they from the Apocalypse? Death, Famine, Disease and ... I forgot the fourth one.

Oh. No, I didn't. Now I remembered it right away to my shame: War.

How could I forget 'War' when war was exactly had been just visited on the whole world?

I looked at four beautiful, naked teenaged girls: black hair, blue eyes, pale skin, thin, emotionless, and wondered if they were my Death, Famine, Disease and War.

"What do we do now?" I asked them humbly, sad that the only girl that had shown any emotion, any warmth, was now gone.

And even she wasn't Alicia.

Alicia.

They had killed her, right in front of my eyes, and ...

Okay. This had been a growing realization, but she was a lost soul, a daughter to me, just like my baby, ready, even now, waiting to be born.

But Alicia had needed me, needed my love, and affection, and ... yes! ... mothering. As hard as she pushed away from me, I now realized it was because she was too ... something, too afraid, too hurt, too alone, too proud, too strong, too something, to ask for something which she probably had never received in her life. Everybody else pushed her away, maybe even because she was so ... _'different,'_ so standoffish. I was the only one who ever ... held her to me, even as she tried to pretend it didn't mean anything to her.

But I saw it. I felt it. I was breaking through to her, and ...

And I had let her down. Somehow. She needed me, and I wasn't there for her.

Two tears escaped my eyes and stained the padding on the table I was strapped to as the realization hit me. I tried to be a good person. I wasn't. I tried to protect Alicia from the terrors of the world. I couldn't.

I was a failure.

I cried silent, bitter tears.

The four fembots, all of them exactly like Alicia, and all of them so devoid of anything of that was _her,_ that they were exactly _not-_Alicia, looked down at my helpless, angry tears.

And didn't lift a finger to comfort me.

Like Alicia would have.

* * *

**A/N(otes):** Okay, so ... yeah, whatever.

'Whatever,' in that, like: in the story. I mean Alicia needing mothering? Yeah, right. _'Oh, I'm a sad, little Infiltrator, and I need mothering!' _I can _so_ see Alicia saying that! (She'd rather say something more romantic, like: 'Aim for the head!' ... Yeah. 'Romantic.' Yeah. *ahem*) _I_ think Caroline's hormones are talking _way_ louder than her ... well, her head is: 'She needs mothering'? More like somebody bossy wants to mommy around a lost kid, when she herself is trying to stay in control and keep her cool during the nuclear apocalypse and is doing that by bossing around somebody she thinks she can emotionally dominate and manipulate, and then when that didn't work, she rewrote history to suite her own interpretation.

But that's just my opinion.

Not that it matters anymore, as Alicia is now in the spare-parts bin.

Right?

Eheh.

(I am _so_ bad!)

And my other 'whatever' turned into this whole big tirade, so I moved it off to an entry called 'The Invisible Girl.' There are a lot of us out there: invisible girls. I'm one of them.

But one reader didn't care about silly, little sorrowful, suffering moi (that is French). She wanted the next chapter, I was the writer of it, and she worried me down until she exacted my promise to write it.

Sometimes ... you have to be hard to get what you want. Sometimes ... the measure of a person's worth is how much somebody else demands not what you think what you can give, but what she knows that you can, and excuses be damned. So this (partial) chapter is for you, Far-away girl.

And my next chapter is being written, _even now as we speak!_

Or, more precisely: even now as we _don't_ speak, as I'm the shy, quiet type; the one to smile tightly and then run away if you notice me too much.

But, still, for a' that, I'm also the one who's smile goes from her face and seeps into her bones, because she knows you _demanded_ the next chapter from her and didn't allow her sad, little whining excuses to allow her to shirk her responsibilities as a writer.

I am a writer. Saga told me: 'Read what you just wrote me: you are a writer, min allra käraste Älskling. Never forget that.' (Saga was always such a bossy, little sweetie, with her big batting eyes, her teasing smile, and her 'erhm, who? me?' and her 'Thuesdays.' The little Valkyrie. God, I miss her so much it physically hurts.)

I will fade away into dust. My job and my disappointments will come and go. My words may touch you today, but someday, they, too, will be no more.

But This is Eternal.

I am a writer, and a writer writes.

Thank you for reading what I've written so far. I hope you like what I've yet to write, but will.

And you know why? Because somebody gave a fuck, and didn't care that I'm a nobody. No, she was somebody who had a voice and a demand, and I better step up to that bell and ring it, because I did _not_ want to mess with this, because she's somebody.

You're somebody. You have a voice, and if you demand hard enough, you may actually find that your demand is being heard by somebody, somebody with just enough life left in her to honor that request, and to honor you, ... for being somebody.

**ps**: Okay. Holy fuck. I just saw Saga leave a Starbucks near where I live. She walked right past me, the shawty, in her little black mini, her candy-cane knee-high socks, her wavy, brunette hair and the self-possessed air of an Old-Worlder navigating calmly through the confused busy-ness of this New World. _Siiiiigggggghhhh._

I guess I'll drown my nostalgic sorrows in a macchiato and a slice of pumpkin bread. I have a little extra cash on my sbux card, so I can indulge in this little treat. Yay for me!

**oh, and pps**: _Maybe_ Caroline's wrong about the fembots' evil plans of vivisectioning her. Just _maybe._ But we just have to wait and see what develops, now, don't we? Eheh. ;)


	7. Boundaries

**Chapter summary: **Um. Uh-oh. Oh, God, no. This is so embarrassing!

* * *

Uh, oh! I am in big trouble.

My stomach cramped up again. No, it wasn't labor, no, my water hadn't broken.

But, in some ways, this was worse, because whatever it was that I ate ...

Well, have you ever eaten an oatmeal bran muffin, right, and, like, thirty minutes later, on the dot ... well. You know.

The brown disc was grain-y, then, in my mouth with the water, it was sludge-y.

It wasn't bran-y, at all.

But I had also drunk three of those jellies.

And my bladder had to make room for the baby, so, in consequence, it was the size of a peanut. If that.

I had to go.

Badly.

"Um, ..." I craned my neck and looked at one of the four horsewomen. I couldn't decide if she were Death or if her buddy was Death.

They all looked badass, ... that is: for a scrawny, titless, teenage girls.

But I had seen what Alicia had done to those hulking robot-soldiers. And then I had seen what these girls turned around and did to Alicia.

Their unperturbed 'don't fuck with me' aura was awe-inspiring.

Death's younger goth sister ignored me.

"Um, please," I said more insistently. "I have to go. Like: right now."

That did not get the desired reaction from Death. In fact, it didn't get any reaction at all. She just looked back at me: the lab-specimen, pinned to the cutting board.

Great.

I looked away from her and squeezed down hard. Then I bit my lip. Then I felt my chest cramping, because I was bearing down so hard, not so I could pee, but so I would not pee.

I didn't know how long I would last.

Correct that. I did know how long I wouldn't last, God damn it.

I whimpered, and that extended itself into a pained whine.

"Please!" I begged. "Please!"

That got their attention. "Please just get me off of this ... _Oh, God! ..._ this table. God, I'm gonna ..."

I whined again, now in agony.

You just don't pee on the sheets of your bed, 'cause it soaks through, right? Right into the mattress and that never comes out, the smell, and then the unsightly stain.

Not unless you're in college. And you come back to your dorm room so drunk your three friends basically drag your sorry ass to your bed, and then you pee yourself, and then puke all over the place.

Like my roommate did my freshman year.

And I was like, great, Tabitha! Thanks for introducing me to College life.

I didn't clean up her shit. She didn't either, she was passed-out drunk, then weepy-drunk. No, her friends heard her hurl and came in and cleaned up for her, while I just stood there like an idiot, watching them clean up for their friend and then drag her off to the common bathroom and clean her up a bit, too.

Tabitha wasn't my friend. She was my roommate in college.

I didn't have a lot of friends in college.

But Death looked at me, and Famine looked at me, and then in the distance I saw Dr. Abe come striding for me.

Dr. Abe. She looked nothing like my Obgyn. Dr. Abe was an older, greying Asian woman, aging comfortably into a happy buddha grandma. But since I had started thinking of this one as Dr. A, the association of the names, if not the looks nor the natures, stuck.

But she didn't reach the table soon enough.

"Oooooh! Goooooawwwd!" I whined.

Then I let go and pee just ... _okay, fuck ..._ just geysered out of me.

_Vvvvt!_ I was up, out of the couch and my arms gripped firmly by Famine and Disease, my feet barely touching the ground as they hustled me away from the table, rushing me in the direction of the apple tree.

But it was too late. My pee had made a nice, big wet spot on the table, I saw and felt as I slid past it off the table, and had soaked its way into the cushion.

"Great," I shouted. My pee stopped in surprise of the sudden movement.

Ever pee while running, or being hustled, that is? Try it sometime. You have to, like, stop to pee, don't you?

They didn't stop. The four of them were moving me briskly away from where I was strapped down ... don't pee where you sleep, I guess ... and, from the apple tree, I saw the ... _fuck, what would her name be? ..._ come rushing toward me.

My, my! News travels fast! _'Oh, look! Preggers girl is peeing! Sound the alarm and tell everybody, why don't we!'_

_Jerks!_

"Look!" I snarled, "I _told _you guys to let me go, but would you listen? _No._ So it's you're own God damn fault the table got soiled. Swear to God, what did you dumbasses think would happen after you fed a pregnant woman?"

We met halfway, me, my entourage, and the servant girl, us facing her, and her facing me.

A very, very slight breeze moved her long, long hair across her face and into her eyes.

She ignored it. I so wanted to brush her hair out of her eyes. She looked untidy, and my neat-freak nature tried to assert itself.

But, of course, it couldn't, me being now _more_ secure in the hands of Famine and Disease than what I ever was on that table. My feet weren't resting on the ground at all, and my toes barely felt the earth from which the wheat grew, tickling my wet inner thighs.

We just looked at each other. The girl blinked twice at me, then looked down at my midsection. She raised her eyes again to me, blinking once more.

I had to go. I still _so _had to go.

And now everybody was staring at me.

Just great.

_'Here, pee into this cup and fill it up to this line.'_

How come when somebody _wants_ you to pee, and are all standing around watching you, you can't go anymore, huh?

The servant girl's ever-faithful tray approached the party, and on it were water jellies.

They jiggled as the tray moved, and my insides squirmed.

Not-Alicia brought her hand to her vulva and exposed her little slit, looking directly at me.

I bit my lip.

"Uh," I said, blushing hard. "I-... I can't go now with ... all of you looking at me like that."

Nothing registered on her face for a moment. She didn't get what I was saying.

She blinked once.

"Uh, I just can't ..." I began, but was stopped when she grabbed a jelly.

She brought it to her mouth and sucked it down expertly, watching me the whole time.

Then, for a second, she closed her eyes, like she was concentrating, her focus was ... inwardly-directed.

Then she started to pee, a small, steady, clear, odorless steam of pee came straight out of her little hole, and she peed for a while.

For a fistful of jellied water while.

She reopened her eyes and looked at me, keenly.

I blushed hard and looked away. "Uh, I know how it works," I said. "I just can't ... go, with you all looking at me." I looked back at her intently. "Do you understand?"

She looked right back at me, blankly.

I sighed. She didn't understand.

I hung my head. "Look," I mumbled, "I'm sorry, guys, but, uh, ... I just can't go, okay? I'm sorry I soiled the padding and stuff, and I'll ... clean my mess or whatever, but ..."

My voice trailed off. What was the point in speaking if nobody understood what you said. My apology sounded lame, even to my ears.

We stood at an impasse for a while, then everybody got the hint, or just gave up on me, because not-Alicia just stood there, looking a little lost herself, and the four horsewomen turned me around and started marching me back, more slowly, to where we had come from.

And, _bam! _The second, okay? The _fucking second_ they gave up and turned me away...

I had to go. Right now. Maybe it was the movement, I don't know.

But I felt it press into me like a motherfucking need that could not be denied.

_"Uh, guys! guys! guys!" _I shouted desperately. "I gotta go. I gotta go! Stop! Stop!"

We stopped.

The _guys-_thing, right? In New England, they bite your head off if you called a crowd 'guys,' even if they were, like, almost all guys. In Tennessee, everybody was 'guys.' All girls? 'Guys.' We didn't get all up in somebody's shit about it. That was the South, and we were easygoing and polite to each other. Fucking Connecticut and their fucking 'Excuse me, Miss, but I'd _appreciate_ it if you didn't refer to our group as 'guys,' as it's not affirming of the women in our group.'

Well, _excuse fucking me!_ The first time I hear than from a mealy-mouthed pansy, I wanted to smack his face. But then the very next day I heard it again from somebody else.

And _don't_ call a woman a 'lady.' She'll be in your face in a heartbeat!

Fucking cold-hearted New Englanders. Swear to God I'd ask Vic to ask for a reassignment to Hawaii. Things moved at _Aloha-time_ there, which could be annoying, but at least everybody treated you with Honest-to-God warmth and sincerity there.

I learned not to say 'guys' in Connecticut. But my Southern-girl nature reasserted itself in my desperation and I forgot my New England manners, and anyway, fuck it! Nuclear War had taken those niceties away from us. My four horseladies didn't seem to care anyway.

Not-Alicia came around the group to face me again.

"C-can you not look at me?" I pleaded, stopped up again.

She didn't look away. In fact, she kept looking right at me.

"Can you at least let my feet touch the ground, huh? Lemme squat down a little bit, okay?" I said.

Not-Alicia looked at me.

My face was becoming ashen. I think I was going to be sick I was so desperate to pee, and so embarrassed that I couldn't.

"Please!" I begged.

And, miracle of miracles! My feet touched the ground, and my knees bent, just a little tiny bit.

I bore down hard, my face twisting up, and then ... "Oh, God! Don't look! Don't look!"

They were all looking at me as my pee just gushed out of me, so I turned my head away, shut my eyes, and peed like the motherfucking desperate pee-cunt I was.

Embarrassed? I'd tell you how embarrassed I was, all you have to do is come within reach, so I can rip your face off for asking.

The pee streamed out for a good, long while, then it squirted out of me a few times, and sputtered to a stop, finally.

My feet were hot and wet, standing in my own piss. It pooled and streamed away, as it was a bit hilly here by apple tree and the stream that was more like a river. It ran across the feet of one of the girls ... War? ... but she paid it no mind at all.

But then.

"Oh, no. Oh, God, no!"

Fuck.

I bore down, cramping hard, and then I threw my God damn head back and whined, crying out.

And then I let go.

Oh, Jesus God, the ...

Okay, you don't want to know about this.

Fuck.

I shit. I fucking shit like a ... like the fucking bitch that I am.

I hung my head and I heard myself wailing, crying with shame of not being able to keep it in me, shitting myself right in front of everybody watching me, probably thinking before I was some low life-form and now having the confirmation of that, right in front of their eyes.

But then ... not-Alicia stepped into my stance, and I yelped in shock at her touch, because she pulled my head into her chest, wrapping me in her arms, and hiding my face from everybody else watching me. Famine and Disease held my arms, impassively, I was their prisoner, but they didn't give fuck-all about me otherwise, but ...

But this one, either she was supporting me, giving me something to bear down on, with the strength of her arms and my head against her chest, feeling her strong, steady beating heart, or she saw my shame and she was ... protecting me from the rest of the world and its hundred prying onlookers, or ...

I burst out into tears, giving everything over to her now. She was my one and only anchor in this hostile sea, the only kindness in this uncaring world, the only thing I could hold onto.

And I held onto her for dear life as I cried and cried and shat like the lowlife scum that I was, in front of all these callous, perfect angels, tormenting me with my every weakness and flaw with their cool and impersonal perfections.

...

"Uh," I panted and sniffled into this girl's chest. "Uh, I'm ... done." I said.

I sniffled again, then breathed in a ragged sob of a sigh.

"Yeah, uh, I'm done," I said sadly.

I felt incredibly ... do you know the relief that comes over you after a hard shit like that? It's like you've just had the goodness-gracious fucking of your life, and I'm sorry if this is TMI, but my God I was actually physically reeling from the release, as well as at the same time being awash in the aftermath of the cry the shame had brought on.

I was one sad, sorry, little fuck.

Not-Alicia held me in her arms, and it was like she was not sure that she should let me go now, or that she was reluctant to do so.

My legs were ... okay, ugh, and my feet were in a puddle of urine.

I didn't think I could've felt any dirtier than when I had been in that fallout shelter with the rest of the kids and adults of the Middletown High School.

I was wrong.

Not-Alicia pulled away from me and looked intently in my eyes.

I couldn't look back at her. I couldn't look into her eyes and see the shame she saw in mine.

I cast my eyes down and mumbled, "We really have to come up with a name for you," I said.

I couldn't continue doing her the disservice of thinking of her as not-Alicia, for, unlike the others, she did have her own way ... not personality, or maybe it was, but I knew she cared for me way more than any of the other robots here who were just doing their jobs.

This one was doing way more than just her job.

She stepped away from me, letting me go, straightening up and looking at me squarely.

It was if she demanded I face her squarely, too, as an equal, that is, unashamed.

I didn't know if I could measure up to that, but I tried.

She regarded me for a moment, then walked right past us all, toward the apple tree and the stream.

And I was turned, and we followed, Famine and Disease holding my arms.

We walked to the edge of the stream, but the servant girl, now leading us walked into the stream.

It was deeper than it looked. A foot from the bank and she was up to her hips in the water.

She turned, facing us. No, facing me. She held her hands out to me, palms out, and her face was ... kind, inviting.

I looked at her twins to either side of me. They weren't letting me go. They weren't interested in doing so.

So the girl glided back up onto the bank and took both my hands into hers.

The other girls, her twins, let go. If I were them, I would, too, because I couldn't see their faces and how they felt about all this. They probably didn't care.

And I didn't, either, because all I could see was this sweet, innocence, vulnerable girl in front of me, and she was ... _fucking smiling at me._

She was smiling a sweet smile at me that was full of trust and faith, and hope, and ...

... and ... love.

The other two emotionless girls, they could have been two angels of death and destruction, but they didn't hold a candle to this girl and her utter and complete ... _openness_ to me. And I had no idea where it was coming from, this warmth and love, but I knew I could not tear my eyes away from her. The rest of the Universe faded away into a sepia-toned blur and all that left was her eyes, and her smile, and my hands in hers.

Her grip was light, but it was rock-solid sure. She wasn't going to let me go, and she wasn't going to let me stumble and fall. She had me, completely, and all I could do was follow her eyes as she stepped backward, step by step back into the stream.

The water was cool, not mountain-stream icy-cold, just uncomfortable cold for a second as I stepped into, but I didn't even notice it too much as my body adjusted to and then accepted the temperature of the water.

Before I knew it, we were waist-deep. I felt the pressure of the water pressing on into me, massaging my body into itself, and my breathing became labored as I now had to push against the water.

And I was breathing for two.

She, my only friend, pulled me deeper into the water, and now the water was up to our chins. We were nearly in the center of the stream, and I could feel the current tugging at me a little bit, not enough to get me worried, but enough that if I were swimming upstream, it would be a good, long workout.

I liked to swim.

The girl smiled sweetly at me again; her look said: 'trust me.'

Then she pulled me into the center of the stream, and we were completely under, in fact, the bottom was a good foot below me, and she pulled me down to her, her feet planted firmly on the stream bed.

My eyes widened, and I shook my head 'no!' my hair waving lazily in the water.

Maybe she didn't need to breathe, but I surely did.

She smiled at me, reassuringly, but I wasn't reassured, I began shaking my head, and I tried to struggle free so I could reach the surface again, and breathe.

And that's when she did it.

She pulled me into her, hard, placed her hand at the back of my head, and pressed her lips to mine.

And she kissed me.

Hard.

Okay. Now I was totally freaking out. Not only had she lured me underwater with her sweetness to ... what? ... drown me, but now she was doing this to me in the total privacy of under the water where nobody else was watching us now.

But then I felt it.

She breathed out through her mouth, forcing air into mine, and expelling the water that had pooled there, and she kept breathing into me.

So I sucked her air into me, breathing through my mouth sealed tightly to hers.

I dared to look at her as I breathed in.

Mistake. Her eyes were intense, watching me, and I was embarrassed, and wanted to turn away from her penetrating gaze. But she wouldn't let me turn away, her hand on the back of my head was like iron and kept my head planted firmly in place and my lips tightly pressed to hers.

_God!_ This was so embarrassing, and she was unrelenting. She just held and held me there, it seemed like forever.

So, I closed my eyes, and let my body go, just drifting in the water's embrace, but firmly bound in hers.

And I started counting, because I just couldn't believe it. I counted a slow ten as she breathed into me without stopping.

In fact, I had to breathe out, and I didn't know how to do it around the constant pressure from the air from her into me, but I figured it out eventually. I opened my eyes and blew air against her mouth, and instead of her sucking my air back into her, she just kept blowing into me, my expelled air forced itself out from between our lips, and our combined air bubbled up up from us to the surface. I watched the bubbles rise, then I looked back down at my little captor.

Another mistake. Her eyes were crinkled into little giggly-laugh lines.

I snorted, and bubbles floated out my nose, tickling it, but when you breathe out your nose, you automatically breathe in through your nose, too, don't you?

I snorted a _whole bunch _of water into my nose, closing off my wind pipe, and I panicked as I choked, struggling against her.

She didn't fight me back, she just held me, calmly breathing into me, forcing her air past my constricted throat until I relearned how to breathe in through my mouth again.

We stood, underwater, like this for ... I don't know, more than a minute. To me it felt like forever, but it was long enough for her to feel my body give itself over to her care, for me to learn to trust that she would be breathing for me.

It was ... powerful, this feeling of completely letting go, and giving over my whole self to somebody else, and realizing that she wasn't even 'somebody else,' and she wasn't even a 'she,' properly.

But that didn't matter. She had me, and she wasn't letting me go, and her earlier smile that conveyed 'trust me' wasn't a betrayal, but it was a promise that she was keeping, no matter what.

And that meant something to me. Growing up, your word meant something in my family, and I always felt so betrayed, so hurt when people would say something, promise something, but then just never do it, never follow through on what they said, and it could be the littlest thing, like saying, 'oh, we should get together for a study group sometime,' and then they never set it up, never talked to you again.

Little promises people made, then broken, every single day. And for me, who had a Mother who told me, 'your word is your bond,' it was just so confusing to know people who just ... did that, broke their promises without a second thought, and all the time at that.

Vic was a man of few words, but when he spoke, you knew you could trust what he was saying, because he made good what he said, every time.

This girl was young woman of no words, but she was good for her promise to me, even implied.

And I admired that in her.

Not sure about the whole kissing-me-underwater-thing, but maybe she didn't see it that way. I hope.

I looked about me, wondering how long we were going to stay underwater, wondering why we were here in the first place, when I saw a disturbance on the surface. By the bank from where we came, a face pushed itself from the surface to watch us. The onlooker's eyes immediately illuminated a bright electric blue, but she was not alone watching us. All along the bank, face after face pushed itself into the water, eyes lighting up the depths with an eerie glow.

I turned my head away from them, from the whole bank, hating the attention, their complete disregard for this very private moment, but my effort was not rewarded, for on the far bank, now in my line of sight, a head pushed itself into the water, looking right down at us, then another, then another, then another, until the far bank was lined with watchful, glowing eyes, black hair waving in the water in front of their faces.

_Great!_ I thought angrily, blowing out an angry sigh through my nostrils, but remembering, this time, to breathe the air in through my mouth.

My 'breather' never tired of feeding me air. I wondered at how much reserve she had in her. It seemed impossible that she could have kept this much in her lungs, as that reserve would've been completely exhausted by now.

This didn't stop her: she just kept breathing into me as I learned to breathe in her air and push it out my lungs between our lips, Breathe her in, push her air out, watch the bubbles rise between us.

I got used to it. It took effort and concentration, but it was actually nice how the water pressed against me, holding me afloat as the current caressed me.

And, by some unseen signal, she began to caress me, too: firm, steady strokes of her arm up and down my back. I looked at her in askance, but she kept doing that until I got used to this new sensation.

And, when she judged that I did, she pushed herself firmly against me, forcing her leg between mine.

That got my attention. I glared at her: _What the hell!_ But she ignored my angry stare and pushed her hand down further my back until it was resting against my butt.

_Okay, now, hold your horses there, girl friend,_ I thought angrily to her. _I did not say it was okay for you to cop a feel there!_

I tried to push against her, to push away from her, but there was nothing for it, she was just way too strong, and, in fact, she used her grip to rub my whole body against hers, in slow, steady strokes, keeping a firm seal on my lips.

So, she wasn't kissing me, and she wasn't humping me. I saw that in her eyes: she was detached and cool.

But I wasn't. I was flustered and confused as hell, and really, really pissed that my body was reacting to this. I'm _not_ a lesbian, _and_ I'm a married woman. Happily so, I'll have you know!

And this girl was just a kid, a teenager. It pissed me off that I was the adult here, but she was calm, cool, collected one, and very much in charge.

She did this for a few strokes, rubbing the whole front of my body and making sure my inner thighs got complete contact with her intruding leg. Then she used her foot to rub around my feet, ankles and calves.

Then it dawned on me. I had just pissed and shat myself. She was washing me. The absence of soap threw me off, and her ... _ahem! ..._ unorthodox approach bewildered me, but I had finally figured out that was what she was doing.

And when I did, _lightbulb, _I stopped struggling so much and relaxed again into her embrace.

And that's when her hand slid down a bit further on my butt, separating my butt cheeks, then a finger brushed against my anus.

I fucking screamed into her mouth. Washing is one thing but ...

Then her finger pushed itself gently into my asshole.

Did I say I screamed? I was like a honey badger now, struggling and screaming, pushing against her, pounding on her back, trying to stop her, trying to break free.

And all my struggles amounted to nothing to her. She just kept me in her embrace, was very careful, but very firm with her finger, pushing further into the place where the Sun doesn't shine, and then she pulled out her finger, completely, waved her hand in the water, and then immediately pushed it back up in there.

She did this three times, each time going in a bit further. Each time I fought her for all I was worth, and she just totally ignored my struggles.

I had just been unceremoniously ass-fucked by a high school teenaged girl.

Well, at least she kissed me first. I'll give her that.

But bitch and I were going to have a very serious talk about this and boundaries after this was over, and I'm dying if I'm lying!

The whole experience and struggle left me utterly exhausted. She pushed her finger in there two more times after I just totally gave up and was forced to relax into this mistreatment, and the last time, there was no pain as I wasn't fighting her finger the whole way.

In fact, instead of pain I felt kinda ...

Um. No. Never mind.

God. Fuck. Vic had been away for six months already when hell decided to come to Earth, and, in this girl's powerful embrace, and subjected to her very ... _special_ care, I felt feelings I shouldn't aught, and my body was shaming me with its reaction to my arousal.

Here a little girl was holding me under the water and cleaning me, yes, but she was kissing me, hard (but not sloppy), and finger-fucking my ass. But not.

And my body wasn't getting the message, or it was getting the wrong message.

The very wrong message.

I was confused, conflicted and infuriated, aroused and exhausted, so, so tense, but at the same time, so relaxed in her total control.

The hand at the back of my head grasped my hair very firmly, and her other hand came up to my chin, pushing my mouth closed.

I was no longer breathing under water.

She pulled her face away from mine, and looked at me very, very seriously.

The water was cold, but I felt the heat of my angry blush warming it around me as the current swept away everything between us and around us.

There was just us, her regarding me coolly, almost compassionately, and me, troubled, glaring at her angrily.

Not breathing. Still.

She seemed satisfied. She took my hands in hers and walked us back up onto the bank again, facing me the whole time.

My entourage of the Four Horseladies awaited me, with Doctor Abe with them.

Oh, and about one hundred other of them, all looking exactly alike, their hair wet and dripping, looking at us dispassionately.

Gravity. Gravity pulled hard at my body, dragging it down to the ground, and I staggered, no longer buoyed by the water.

The girl handed me over to a pair of the four horseladies, I didn't see whom, because before the transfer could be completed, I slipped my right arm from her grasp, both of hers, turned on my heel and smacked the girl, hard, on the cheek.

_"Owww!"_

It was me who cried out, not her, even though I hit her really hard. The force of the blow hurt my hand, and my palm stung.

But she just stood there, unhurt.

So I hit her, hard, on the same cheek again, and bit my tongue to stifle my scream.

Her cheek started to turn red.

"Don't you ever, ever do that again!" I screamed in her face. I took a deep breath, trying to calm myself. "There are ... _Jesus!" _I shouted, not so calm, after all, "there are _boundaries _that you have to respect, you hear me?"

She looked at me impassively.

No. Sullenly.

I glared at her. "I swear to God," I said coldly. "You touch me again like that, I'll fucking kill you, you hear me?"

There was a light breeze in the air, chilling me further, but my anger burned hot and ice-cold at the same time.

One of the horse-girls ... Death, herself? ... took my free arm, and we walked away from the riverbank, back toward my table.

Jesus.

Servant girl followed alongside, ignoring my death-glare. Couldn't she take the hint?

She didn't look at me. Not once.

She detached herself from our group, angling away, then fell to her knees.

I looked over at her, curious, despite myself as the distance between us widened.

Then she dug a little hole in the ground with her hands, and picked up a pile of earth ...

No. It wasn't that. It was my shit, and she scooped it into the hole and covered it over, stood, and started heading back to the river.

I looked at her receding back.

"I should have done that," I whispered. I looked at my guards, or whatever they were. "It was my mess," I said. "I should've been the one to clean it up, not her."

They didn't listen, they didn't care. I craned my neck around to see the girl, but the angle wasn't right, or she was gone again, or something.

Suddenly I wasn't the righteous, angry, put-upon person anymore. All that just drained out of me, and now I felt like shit. No: I felt lower than my shit the little servant girl steadfastly buried ... right after I smacked her in the face and for what? Because she cleaned me.

God! I'm such a shit!

I hung my head.

The brought me back to the table. "Can we not ...?" I began. I was _so_ looking forward to being strapped down again after my few moments standing up.

But they ignored me, and strapped me right now. I looked for stains on the cushions, worrying about dirtying myself after being cleaned, and I did feel really clean now, and refreshed.

But the cushions seemed to have been replaced. They looked brand new: not soiled at all, like the other ones had been.

My audience, the hundred or so girls who had been ogling me from the river banks, they all moved in a big circle around me, some distance away, to give me lots of space, but I knew they were there. I saw one of them take a step back, fade away, and another one, just like her fade in and take her old place.

I realized what I was doing. I was looking, hoping, that one of the girls that would fade in just might possibly be Alicia.

But there was no hope of that happening.

I told myself to stop.

I looked away from them and back at my guards, my prison guards. "I'm tired," I complained faintly, and before I knew it, I fell into an exhausted sleep.


	8. Alicia's Choice

**Chapter summary: **It's funny what you believe about people, and what people let you believe. Alicia let me think she was a poor, helpless girl, when she was anything but. Why did she let me think this? Why did she choose me? Oh, and Ruth is quite the player. Yes: _Ruth. _I had a name for my little servant-girl now. Who was anything but.

* * *

I just couldn't figure it out.

Why, of all people, did Alicia pick me?

Why, of all people, was I the one that was being stared at by hundreds of her clone-Stepford sisters? And why?

That's what was killing me. Why? Why? Why? WHY? WHY!

They didn't answer me when I spoke, they didn't ... _do_ anything to me. I was just strapped down at this table when I slept and ate, and I wasn't allowed to do anything, either.

And there wasn't an air of expectation from them. They just stood around me, the four of them, the hundred of them in a big circle, they just watch me.

And then there was Dr. Abe and the other girl. Dr. Abe checked up on me, regularly, and the other girl ...

Well, the other girl.

I have never felt so violated in my whole life, and what killed me is that she asked me to trust her. Not in words, no, but with her eyes. She held out her hands to me, and her eyes said, 'trust me,' and I did.

And then she took me under water and ... did that to me.

I couldn't get that out of my mind. I never wanted to see her again.

But the image that shattered me was afterward. She just took the blows, and then, the last I saw of her was on her knees, digging a hole and scooping my shit into it, and burying it.

I mean, how debased can you be to be cleaning up somebody else's shit, and that was after I gave her two hard smacks across the face.

I felt like the violated one, then I felt like such a shit.

For lying on a table, being stared at all day, I have never been through an emotional wringer like have now.

And still. I was in a fallout shelter. I was stewing in everybody else's shit. We were running out of food. We got attacked. People died. Lots of people died.

Alicia died.

Surrounded by more than one-hundred perfect duplicates of her, the girl who saved my life, _three times,_ I have never felt so lost and alone.

It was supper time, I guessed. I saw the girl approaching me with tray. It was the same girl. She had the gall to face me after what she did to me. She had the nerve!

And I had to face her back, after I smacked her, and watched her bury my shit.

I couldn't.

I felt her walk up to me, but I couldn't look at her.

She turned my head to her. Icy blue eyes greeted mine, coolly.

She was all professional now, no warmth in her.

She picked up a water-jelly and showed it to me.

"I hope to God you washed your hands!" I snarled.

She blinked, and her eyebrows came together in confusion. She looked between me and the jelly, and held it up to me.

I sighed.

"You don't understand a word I'm saying, do you?" I said.

The blank, patient look.

I shook my head. "There's just no getting through to you, is there?"

She blinked twice, rapidly, then put the jelly back on the tray and dropped her hands down by her sides, and waited.

I blew out a long, angry, frustrated side and looked away.

"Toto," I muttered angrily, "I don't think we're in Kansas anymore!"

Oh, great; look: Dr. Abe.

Dr. Abe came up to me, shouldering her way past Death and Disease. She looked between me and my girl Friday and back, then she studied me intently.

She gave my girl a withering look.

I got the feeling Dr. Abe was rather bossy. Like there was no pleasing her. Like there was nothing you could do, no matter how hard you tried, that would satisfy me.

Kind of reminded me of me. Except she made no bones about her displeasure.

It made me feel protective of my little servant girl.

I wasn't the kind of person that would go 'ha, ha, you're in trouble!' and laugh in your face. I was kind of the opposite, actually; if somebody was getting picked on, I was the one who usually stood up for her. Got me in trouble in school sometimes when bullies or queen bees started picking on the scrawny kid.

I wasn't the scrawny kid, so I could give as much as I could take.

You should've seen me take out these three tough girls picking on this little runt kid, who looks a little like Alicia, skinny, pale, but scared-looking. They got what-for, I tell you what, and then I turned on the girl and told her off, big time, telling her the only reason they picked on her was because she was carrying around the 'Imma victim' sign so big it was obvious for all to see, and if she didn't fight back, and hard, they'd keep picking on her, so grow a backbone, kid, for chrissake!

She told me, through her tears, that it wasn't nice to fight back.

Boy, the lecture she got from that! ... I think those girls picking on her were actually softer on her than I was then.

I left the poor kid crying in the hallway.

I'm not exactly the sympathetic-type.

But I didn't like Dr. Abe's sour look to my girl. It enflamed my protective nature.

I gave Dr. Abe one of my better glares as she examined me. She frowned as she did so.

And, in fact, it was Dr. Abe who picked up the jelly, frowning at me.

I frowned right back.

_Jerk,_ I thought contemptuously. Pick on a little kid like that, just because I'm being difficult. Wasn't her fault!

Dr. Abe put the jelly back on the tray and stepped back.

My girl picked it back up from the tray and showed it to me again. She did it as before, and she didn't look to Dr. Abe to see if she were doing it right this time, but ...

But I knew the score. After their respective jobs were done today, the girl was going to catch hell for not doing her job, or whatever.

My girl kissed the jelly and held it up to me again.

I nodded, trying not to shoot Dr. Abe an angry glare.

Another thing I learned in school: if you want to make something worse for somebody, be angry at the person who can make their lives hell. Worked every time: they can't take it out on you, so they take it out on the person they can.

The girl held the jelly to my lips, and I sucked the water down.

I found I was hungry again. I don't know how long I had slept, but the dusk was fast approaching, the Sun behind dusty clouds turned the sky a rich orange.

She brought the brown disk to my lips, and I took a little bite, controlling my urge to take more. It filled my mouth, expanding in it instantly, and I drank more water supplied by another jelly.

And so went my second meal, tasting exactly like my first, that is: like nothing.

I finished it quickly, getting the hang of it now my second time, and when I was done, my stomach was full, in fact, I was stuffed! And still, I only ate just a little more than a quarter of the disc.

What the hell do they put in that thing?

The tray and the remains of supper floated away, and two of my guards grabbed my arms, and the straps went away, retracting from my body.

I guess this time they weren't going to wait for me to soil the furniture. Smart, aren't they?

"Thank you," I said to the servant girl as I was stood.

My two guards held me firmly, supporting my weight easily in their hands. There was no getting away from them.

Servant girl looked at me.

"Do you have a name?" I asked politely.

I may have as well been talking to a statue for all her response, ... her lack of response.

"Name?" I said, "... like ..."

Then I realized I had never told her my name. "Well, my name's Caroline. What's yours?"

She blinked twice slowly. I saw her breathing steadily, but those were the only signs that she was alive.

'Alive,' I mean, like 'alive' for a robot, or whatever she was.

She looked alive to me. Does that count?

Maybe my soldier girls got bored with the conversation (the _one-sided_ conversation) or maybe it was just time to go, because they marched me off, right past the servant girl, like she weren't there, or they were just done with her.

I got the feeling she was _way_ down in their hierarchy, like: _'oh, you take care of the human, because nobody else is as low as you.'_

I felt a little bit sorry for her.

She joined our party, walking alongside our group: my four guards and me.

I wondered why I would have my own guard squad. Was I that important to them? Did they think I was going to make a break for it? _Pregnant? _And, to where?

We didn't walk toward the apple tree, or, actually, I saw that we were doing that, but this time we were going in a wide loop toward it. The large circle of girls was still a bit distance, but our own loop came closer to them, so I could see more detail of them.

They all, still, looked the same to me. One being interchangeable with the other.

I looked at my servant girl, looking for a difference between her, and Dr. Abe, and my guards, and the large circle of girls surrounding us at a distance.

I couldn't tell a difference, physically, but ...

But she carried herself a little, tiny bit differently. She walked more ... quietly now, like she was lost in her own thoughts.

I wondered what she was thinking.

I looked at her openly as we walked along, but she didn't look back.

"I'll think of a name for you," I said to her firmly. "I promise."

This one was different. I saw it. She didn't look any different than any of the others, but I could pick her out right away if she were in a crowd of them. I was sure of it.

I had told myself I would come up with a name for her, but did I put any effort in that up to now? No, I hadn't. I mean, I thought about it, off and on, but I found that thinking was actually hard work. Well, I would put in that work now. I promised her, and I always did what I promised.

We stopped not far from the tree and the stream, and my girl moved to the front of me and waited. By that time I was seriously exercised out. I don't think we walked all that far. I mean, I'd walk two miles to my high school every day way-back-when, and got teased about it, too. But I was a very good walker.

But the forced rest, strapped down to that table all the time, and I was really far along. Before I was walking for myself, and I had my school books in my backpack, yes, so that was a little bit the same, ...

But it wasn't the same at all. The baby had a mind of her own, and you couldn't shift her around to suit your comfort. I had to carry her around, a bowling ball in my tummy, and the strain of that, with the walk, pulled up through my shoulders, and all the stress rested on my back.

I was nine months pregnant. Should I be on bed-rest? That was uncomfortable as hell, lying on my back all the time, but as soon as I got up, I was winded and, honestly, my guards carried me more than I actually walked, and still, when we finally stopped by the good-ol' apple tree, I was winded.

Was this some kind of exercise program they were putting me through? It was working.

I wanted to snarl at them not to push it, for goodness sake!

My girl Friday separated herself from the group and came to stand two yards in front of me.

"Hey," I said in greeting.

She looked at me expectantly, waiting.

"Oh!" I said, surprised.

She waited.

"Look," I explained. "It doesn't work like that. I just don't go on cue, do you understand that?"

She just looked at me.

"I mean," I added, "I'm not some, you know, robot where you flip a switch, and ..."

She blinked.

Suddenly, I felt my insides cramp up terribly, painfully. It was like she had thrown an air punch from where she was standing, and it connected with my stomach and reverberated through my whole body.

"Whaaaa!" I screamed in surprise, and I was peeing and pooping explosively, and if my guards didn't have me grasped firmly in hand, I would've fallen to the ground, because my legs just totally gave out when the cramping hit me.

But, as it was, it all came out in a rush. The evacuation was painful in its push, and the relief was both incredible, but I felt the sudden emptiness in my bladder and in my bowels, and that didn't feel good. It actually ached inside because I had expelled everything inside me, and so quickly.

My girl blinked again.

Just as quickly as I had cramped up, the tenseness left my body, leaving my limbs and my insides feeling tired and rubbery, and I felt, not better, but ... it had stopped, the cramping, and now I could think, and be stunned by what had just hit me, like a truck.

I looked in shock at not-Alicia, standing in front of me, putting her, and what she didn't particularly do, but ... somehow they were connected.

"Did you ..." I said, but then I had to clear my throat. You ever poop so hard that you, like, scream inside your mouth and your throat hurts afterward?

Anyway.

"Did you just ... do that to me?" I asked her.

Instead of responding to me, she stepped forward toward me, stepping on my pee and poop, completely heedless of it.

Her attention was on me, not on what I excreted.

"No," I shook my head as she extended her hands toward mine.

The guards put my hands into hers, and she started walking me toward the water.

"No," I said, "I can wash myself. Really."

She blinked twice, once more. Hearing me, but not listening. Not at all.

"No, really," I said, stumbling, trying to hold my ground, but being pulled into the water by a little girl of such steadiness and strength that there was nothing, absolutely nothing I could do to slow her or deflect her. I stumbled, but her hold on me was so sure that it was just one foot stumbling over the other, walking me toward the water.

"Don't _do_ this!" I said angrily ... pleadingly.

We were ankle-deep in the stream, and, her, looking right at me, backing us into the water, she was knee-deep already.

"Do you hear me?" I hollered, "Don't ... oh, _no!"_

And we were under.

She didn't waste any time at all arguing with me. Not one second.

And her lips were on mine, and her breath steady, constant, breathing air into me that I sucked in, because otherwise I would drown, and I blew out when my lungs got full, bubbles escaping my nose, too, as I got used to clearing water from it with my exhalations.

I looked right into her eyes, and I shook my head _no_ ever so slightly, not breaking the air-seal between us.

She looked right back at me, steadily.

And with satisfaction. She saw I had gotten the hang of breathing her air under the water.

So her hand went ... down.

_"NO!" _I shouted into her mouth, trying to pull my head away from hers.

Her left hand was an iron bar on the back of my head. I could move it all I wanted ... just like I could push a 747 down a runway at Bradlee International Airport.

That is, not even a fraction of an inch.

_"NO!" _I screamed, then I breathed in her air. _"NO!"_ I screamed, and breathed. _"Nonono!" _I shouted, ...

... and breathed.

And she watched me the whole time, seeing that I was breathing, and not choking to death.

With that assurance, she cleaned me, exactly like she cleaned me the last meal.

And you better God-damn believe I fought her. I fought her with everything I had. I fought her with my hands and my legs, and my big, big, round tummy, but very carefully that, and I clenched my ass for all I was worth, and screamed at the top of my lungs, breathing in the air she pushed into me from her mouth, and screaming it right back out, right back into her mouth.

And for all that, her fingers probed and reamed me anally, and ...

And it was almost an insult how easily she took me. For her, it was like a casual fuck, and I was her bitch that she could do anything she wanted to. I could fight for all I was worth, and it didn't change one single thing. _That's_ how effective I was against her: not at all.

But I fought, and she fucked my ass, ... not really, but ... for _fuck's sake!_ ... she cleaned me anally, and I fought and fought ...

But I got tired fighting, eventually. It didn't matter to her, she was making sure my whole body was clean, inside and out, and I could fight it like a little baby, but ...

But she was just doing her job, that was all it was to her, just her job: clean the preggers woman. So that's what she did: cleaned the preggers woman.

And eventually, as she continued to ream me, I just ... gave up. My ass could only clench so hard before it gave into the anal assault, and the thing was, she wasn't pounding my ass mercilessly, in fact, if anything, she was gentle with it.

She fucked me gently. Up the ass.

And that was the problem. My body couldn't tell anymore whether she was just cleaning me or if she were ... you know.

God.

That is, I couldn't tell anymore if she were just cleaning me or if she were seriously giving me the ass-fucking of my life.

Until yesterday, I had never, _ever_ been fucked there, touched there sexually, ... _anything_, okay? I mean, doctors are one thing, but this was ...

I mean to say that intellectually I could tell the difference.

But there wasn't a lot of intelligent thought going through my body right now. There was a very gentle, steady ass-fucking going on, and her leg, between my thighs, rubbed against me as she cleaned me back there, didn't help at all.

Well, I mean, help at all to clear my head. It helped in ... other ways, and ... my body began to ...

And, boom. That's when she was done. She was just ... done with me. She took her two fingers out of my ass, just like that, and started to walk me back to the bank, her lips pressed to mine, her arm basically holding me up, and in the water, because me?

I was a bowl of jelly right now.

And I kept looking at her. Hurt. How could she do that to me! How could she stop when ...

When it had just started to get really good.

My mind was a confused whirl, a mess. I didn't know what to think. Should I be forgiving, I mean, after all, she was just doing her job, right? Or should I be angry and affronted, or ...

Or what, exactly, should I be angry about? That she did this to me, even though I obviously said no, even though I obviously fought her doing it? Doing me.

Or that she stopped? Doing me.

My body was jelly, and my mind was a confused mess.

And that's how she carried me out of the water, because as soon as we broke the surface, I just sagged into her arms, so she hoisted me to the shore.

If she didn't, I would've just sunk right back down, fallen straight into the water, and do the dead-man's float until I actually was literally dead. I didn't know what to do or what to think, and I didn't have the muscle strength to do it anyway.

I was _this close._

I was this close to cumming when she pulled her fingers out of my anal cavity and pulled me back up on shore. Just a moment longer, just a few seconds more, and I swear to God, they would've heard me in Gatlinburg, ... even though we weren't in Kansas anymore, Toto, were we.

So she had to basically support me up all the way out of the water onto the shore where she delivered me into the hands of my guards.

Well, one of the guards.

I looked at the guard that was supposed to take my other hand. She didn't, and that knocked me off-balance for a second.

You ever hold a bird in your hand by one wing, and the other wing flutters, trying to free it, but only causing the held-wing to break in your hand, and the bird dies?

No?

Well, imagine the opposite. I had been a captive here the whole time, so I _expected_ to be held prisoner, and my guard just ... didn't. I looked at her dumbly.

Was this ... a test? Did they want to see if I would try to make a break for it? ... under their combined and intense scrutiny?

I looked to the guard who did hold my arm.

She was definitely _not_ letting go. She didn't have a death grip on me, but her grip was firm, confident. I wasn't going anywhere.

I looked back to the first guard. "Aren't you going to ...?"

She broke her gaze with me, and glanced toward my servant-girl.

"Oh," I said, realization dawning.

I looked at the servant-girl. She stood there, waiting, right in face-smacking range.

"Oh," I said, looking at her.

She just ... waited, like she was saying in how she stood: _'okay, get it over with, take it out on me.'_

Like before. She wanted me to take out all my anger on her, just because she was doing her job.

No, it was more than that.

She was the low-girl on the totem-pole. I could see it, the way the others took her for granted and treated her like she wasn't there. _'Here, make yourself useful and feed the human and then clean up her shit, because we as sure as hell aren't going to do that.'_

I so saw it in the deferential way she was around everybody else ... every-robot-else? ... and around even me. It was like she _expected_ to be treated lower.

And now the four guard girls stood around me and around her, like the four senior queen bees in high school, and they were like to me: _'Oh, go ahead and smack her. She's nothing, and hang with us cool girls.'_

It wasn't like they were glorying in it, but the anticipation in the air was palpable. They were just waiting for me to lay into her.

So they could tease her later about it? For doing her job?

Oh, I got angry again, all right! I wanted to smack the shit out of somebody, again, all right!

But it wasn't this girl, who was just standing there, waiting to be smacked.

What I wanted to do is cry for her. _Jesus!_ I was pissed!

I brought my hand up to her face, but more slowly this time, that is: not at smacking-speed, and tried to brush a careless wet strand of her hair out of her face.

Her long black hair was beautiful, and all over the place. My gesture did nothing.

"You were just doing your job, weren't you?" I said softly to her.

She looked at me, absolutely dumbfounded, like a girl totally expecting to be smacked, and then ... totally not being smacked. That can actually physically hurt, you know, unexpected kindness. I know. Personally.

"Like ... before," I said, "when I smacked you, right here." I touched her cheek.

"I'm sorry," I said from the bottom of my heart. "I'm ... sorry about that. I'm ..." I collected myself. "I'm lost, too, you know, and you were the only one I could hit back at, and I ..."

I looked away and swallowed hard. "And I ... did that. I hit you, just because you were there and you were the only one who ..."

I broke off again, but this time I couldn't continue.

I took a deep, ragged breath and looked back at her.

"Can..." I offered, "can I clean up my mess this time, please? I mean," I added quickly, "I made it, so I should clean up after myself, you know."

I actually didn't know anymore if I made it, or if somehow, magically, she _made_ me made it.

But I guess that didn't really matter. I knew where the poop came from, and I knew, really, if it weren't for me, there wouldn't be this God-awful mess.

_They_ didn't need to poop, it seemed to me.

But instead of responding, she just stood there, looking back at me.

I don't think she was expecting this from me. I don't think any of them were. But it became obvious to them that no smackings were forthcoming, so guard number two took my hand from the girl's shoulder, and they pulled me away from her, gently, yes, but off we went.

And we left here standing there, alone, and if there were such a thing as infinite sadness, then a cloud of it just seem to float over her, because that's how we left her.

Looking back, the last I saw of her she knelt down and set to work, cleaning my mess.

I hung my head as my guard pulled me back to my table.

...

_Night._

I was cold. I said it. They knew it. It was obvious, I was shivering from the water evaporating off me.

So my girl came with a light, white soft sheet made of ... linen.

It's hard to describe things here that have no similarity to the things of the world I knew. 'Linen' was the closest I could describe the thing that was soft, woven ... 'material'? I didn't even know what it was.

But it warmed me.

And I knew who gave it to me.

"Can I tell you a story?" I asked my girl as she covered me in the sheet and started to tuck me in.

Very thoughtful of her, very ... sweet.

"It's from the Bible," I said. "Do you know what the Bible is?" I asked her, looking for confirmation.

She glanced at me, acknowledging that she was listening to me, that I wasn't just talking into the air.

I bet you one million dollars, though, that not one word I said made sense to her.

"Well," I continued, "there was like, this old widow. Her name was Esther, right? And her husband had died, and her children had died, and, back then, women weren't allowed to fend for themselves or basically anything, so she was just going to waste away and die, see?" I told her.

"But she was a woman of God, so God sent her this girl from another country called Ruth as a slave, and I guess slaves could do stuff, so Ruth did everything for Esther, so Esther could live, and Ruth did it, not because she was her slave, but because she ..."

I paused and looked away. "Because she wanted to, because Esther was like this good person, and Ruth saw that, and Ruth was just so happy to help, even doing things that Esther, nor nobody would because they were just ... you know, menial, right?"

I looked at Ruth.

"And ..." I said, "I'm no Esther, see? Not by a long shot. In fact, I'm like, seriously, a nobody, like, so ... you know? _boring!_ So not 'in,' but ..."

Ruth was looking at me, patiently.

"And it's called the Book of Esther, but it's really a story about Ruth, because she said, and this is so beautiful, 'Your ways will be my ways, and your God will be my God.'"

I looked at her. "She gave up _everything_ to be with Esther, her ways, her people, her God, because she just ..."

I swallowed hard.

_"God!"_ Why was I so emotional about everything now? Why were my hormones on turbo-charged, like all the time?

Why was the weight of the entire world on my shoulders? I was the only one my baby had in this strange, new world, and I felt the burden of it keenly, and I didn't know what I could do to help her, and I had no one to lean on for help.

Ruth made to go, like she was going to give me my space.

"Ruth," I called out to her.

She stopped, and when she did, my heart stopped, too.

She knew her name.

"Please don't leave me alone," I said. "Not now. Please."

Ruth looked at me, staying, but I saw the conflict in her. She was supposed to go. I could feel it in her, the tug. To go where, I didn't know.

But I did know I wasn't going to make it through tonight, left to myself and my thoughts, and the weight of the world on my shoulders.

"Please," I begged.

Ruth stayed.

"Please," I said.

Ruth sighed.

God, I was so high-maintenance for her, wasn't I? I hated myself in this neediness. I had never been like this.

But I did need her. Now.

I reached out my hand to her, a twitching motion as my arm, my whole body was securely strapped down.

She took my hand in hers and stayed.

I looked down toward her hand, but my big belly blocked the way, so I squeezed and squeezed and squeezed her hand and if it were a little mouse I would have squeezed her hand to death.

My only anchor in this insane world.

"Ruth," I said, knowing her name now, and loving it, loving how it came out of my mouth.

And I pushed it. I dared. Just a little bit.

"Take these God-damn straps off me," I said.

She looked back at me. She knew what I was asking.

"Now," I snarled softly.

She didn't move. She didn't flinch. She just didn't ...

It just wasn't in her programming, the God-damn robot, who was the only one who took care of me.

She let me hold onto her hand for another minute, but then she gently pulled her hand out my death-grip.

"No," I said.

She turned to go.

"No, nononono! Ruth!" I called to her back.

She stopped.

"Please stay," I said. "Ruth, please stay."

She turned back and examined me critically.

I wondered what she was looking for.

"Please stay," I said.

She stood there.

"Ruth," I said, and my hand twitched, opening, turning to her. If I had strings in my hand, I would have pulled her toward me.

I didn't, but somehow, I did.

She came back to me, and put her hand back in mine.

I sighed so hard, it felt like my life was leaving me with the breath I exhaled.

"Stay with me, okay?" I said, and added: "Through the night."

Do you know how when something's been with you for so long, you don't even notice it anymore? Like, that box of books you're going to bring downstairs and shelve, finally, but you never get around to doing that, so you just automatically walk around that box by the cellar door for the hundredth time, not even seeing it?

My guards took two steps back away from the table, giving me and Ruth a bit of space, our own little bubble of privacy, and I started at their movement, because I just didn't see them anymore somehow.

But, I noted that, then I returned my attention to what I really cared about.

"You will stay," I said to Ruth.

It was hard to tell in the fading light, but I swear I almost saw a smirk ghost across Ruth's lips.

I think Ruth was a bit of a player, playing me with her waifish servant-girl poor-me look, but underneath, maybe she was a bit of a manipulator.

"Hmmph!" I complained, but pleased. So she was a player. That was still a huge improvement over the lifeless carbon-copies around her, and she was smirking at my antics, so, somehow that pleased me that I pleased her.

I own lips quirked up in response of the maybe-smirk that I might've seen on her lips a second ago. But it was an involuntary response: not my fault at all.

"Thank you," I added quickly, before I forgot, "for staying, and for ... everything."

Ruth did smile at that. I think she understood more than she was letting on sometimes.

_Player,_ I thought, and glared at her.

Then a miracle happened. The table ... I got this terrible sinking feeling, not like the table was sinking, because I felt no movement from it at all, but it was like the ground was 'sinking up' to meet us. It wasn't like the ground was rising, it was I was floating, but somehow the ground was floating, too, and it came up until it just barely touched the bottom of the table.

And the feeling through my poor, tired back was incredible! The weight I've been carrying around for so long, the ground supported me, and much more so than how the table did. The relief was almost painful, it felt so good.

"NNnnahh!" I sighed in relief.

God, more than anything, I wanted this baby out of me! Just, you know, so I could hold her in my arms, burp her over my shoulder, put her to my breast, anything! Have that freedom to hold her, or even, for goodness sake! to lay her beside me for a moment, so I could just get the feeling of _not_ carrying her in me in only one position.

My back _hurt. _And I wondered how every other woman handled this continuous ache day after day, month after month.

I sighed, relieved, and the baby kicked, just to remind me who was boss. I wanted to rub my belly to comfort her, but my arms had not been mine for so long now.

Alic-... no: Ruth. Ruth sat down beside me, cross-legged.

"Oh, Ruth!" I said, praising her and reminding myself. I looked at her, and smiled.

She smiled back, wanly, probably reflecting my smile in its sadness, just because that's what she did: copy the human so that she could look like one.

I turned away from looking at her face, and a tear spilled over my cheek.

"I miss Alicia," I said sadly. "She'd say something sweet now, like ..."

I thought back over what she said to me, and I had to chuckle. "Like ... 'grenade!' or 'aim for the head,' or 'this will hurt,' or ..."

I laughed at that. I actually couldn't think of a kind or sweet thing Alicia had said to me.

Everything I thought about her, the poor, helpless girl, was just ... wrong. It was all just what I wanted her to be.

But the thing was, ... and I don't know if this hurt, or what, but she _let_ me think about her this way, maybe it was all part of her sham, but I think it was maybe because she just needed somebody to care about her.

And she picked me.

All these others, Ruth, even, they just moved about, doing what they were programmed to do, I suppose, and they could care less about what I thought. Ruth was ... _slightly_ different, but Alicia...

I looked back at Ruth, sitting beside me. She was no Alicia, and I felt an empty ache for the girl I tried to protect, but ultimately let down.

But Ruth did sit beside me.

I smiled at her.

"Good night, Ruth," I said softly.

And I slept.

* * *

**A/C: **Two thoughts, one thought: Space Pulp. (link) g-dot-e-dash-hentai-dot-org-slash-g-slash-783686-slash1b79cdbc03 Fucking amazing. I love how it doesn't feel that it has to explain everything (like I feel that I have to) ... or maybe because it stars a kick-ass redhead, eh, `phfina? (`phfina sighs, stars in her eyes)

**ps: **Oh, and 'dealing with grief'? I thought I dealt, or didn't 'deal' but 'lived' with grief, and then I read how Björk is dealing with, suffering through, her grief. (link) grapevine-dot-is-slash-mag-slash-feature-slash-2015-slash-02-slash-06-slash-bjorks-folk-music At least she mourns, she rages, she's knocked down and stunned by grief. Me, I just ... bow down and bear it, suffering, wallowing, and I'm like ... I have a long way to go, don't I?

**pps:** Okay, stop reading right here, unless, that is, you give a fuck about me, or, idk, you like watching personal train-wrecks. Stop. Seriously.

You were warned.

Which is to say, it's been ... tough. Fired/quit my job on Friday, and all weekend, just ... busy, a neighbor's 40th birthday party, so I had to be nice and fun and congratulatory for her and her family, and the whole time I'm just wondering: _My life is such a mess! Will I ever make it to forty? Will I want to?_ She, Caroline _(yes, CAROLINE!)_ is forty, and preggers _(yes!)_ with baby number ... six? and is working the family farm, slaughtering chickens and rabbits, and so flush with happiness, and here I am, and ... what have I done with my life? A no-life, jobless loser! Well, at least I updated this story, you know. I don't know why I'm writing this, maybe to beg your indulgence that maybe sometimes 'The Author(esse)' has troubles of her own, and sometimes it's hard to 'update soon!'

Which is just bullshit, because this whole weekend all I wanted to do was to write this chapter. You want me to update soon, but not as much as I want to get that update out there. What really hurts as a writer is not to be writing, but it just seems to me that all of my life is conspiring against me _not_ to write. Like, this weekend? All I wanted was to be left alone, but I just wasn't.

But, then again, I _did_ have fun at the party and was happy for Caroline and ... I don't know: what would have happened to me if I _weren't_ bugged and I _was _left alone?

I suppose I'll go find another job and go back to pretending I'm a normal, well-adjusted person and that everything is 'fine.'

... I finished a story. For once in my life. _Victoria Alone,_ and 'life' goes on for Victoria, but she, and Summer, got their happy ending, even as life goes on, and I'm happy for a character I wrote, that she got a happy ending, even though life goes on, and I wonder what that feels like, but I know how it feels, for special times in my life, that happy ending, that happy-now when you're with somebody you love who loves you, and life is going great enough that you're enjoying it, your life, your job, your dear, dear, dearest one and you're fine, ... even with you.

I like that feeling when I've got that, that things are going fine, and you're fine because you actually are.

If you have that now, don't hold onto it with a strangle-hold (because you won't, you'll just glide through that groove, anyway), and if you're _not _having that now, go out and get that, or dive in deep enough to wipe away those bitter tears, then dive up out of yourself, look around you, and then go get that, your happiness.

So, I said: "Which is just bullshit, because this whole weekend all I wanted to do was to write this chapter." Not true. All I wanted to do this weekend, and now, is something else. But I'm a strong, capable, independent woman. I'm a big girl now, and big girls don't cry, do they?

They don't have time to cry, and if they're seen crying, it just reinforces everything, doesn't it? "Oh, it's okay, dearie, we understand!"

When they don't, they don't at all, but it's just confirmed in their minds the whole women-can't-play-in-the-big-leagues, so then none of us can break down or be weak, because then we betray all of us.

I guess I'm not such a big girl, after all. Am I.

I _really_ don't want your pity, nor your understanding. I know you pity me, and you do understand. I know this, and thank you, really: some of you have pulled me through when I simply couldn't.

But.

I don't. I don't pity me. I hate me. And I don't understand. Not at all. Why would God put me on this Earth if all I am is just this fuck-up?

A strong, independent woman doesn't need validation from her job, or from what her friends think, or ... anything.

And that's just another slap to the face, that I'm weak, and I'm not supposed to be, not in this modern day-and-age, but if you look back through history, women had to be even stronger than now, just to survive, themselves, or even to keep their families alive. So what am I moaning about?

Another slap to the face: I have no reason to complain, so I may as well shut the fuck up.

Fuck my life.

Haha. Too late.

This is just the pitch blackness I have to work through, and no, it's not that time of the month, thanks for asking, ... it's just that point in my life where I have to look myself squarely in the eye, see me for what I am, and say to that little girl looking back at me in the mirror: "Buck up, kiddo."

And buck that kiddo up.

That's all. That's all there is to it.


	9. Precious Cargo

**Chapter summary:** You know, being held captive by young, naked sex-bots would just have to be every man's dream, right? So when is somebody going to tell them that _HELLO! PREGGERS WOMAN IS NOT A GUY! GOD!_ And we really have to talk about personal space, don't we? Mmhm, yes, indeedy, we do.

* * *

I woke, yawning a big, contented yawn, and tried to stretch.

Couldn't. Bound-pregnant girl can't stretch.

I looked up to Ruth's face, looking down at me, regarding me.

"Oh, hi!" I said, so pleased she was still with me.

She smiled at me warmly.

Maybe she didn't get what I was saying to her, at all, but maybe my tone communicated my intent well enough.

Anyway, I was happy to see her still here beside me.

"Uh," I flushed, looking away in embarrassment. "Need to pee!"

I think they all knew what those words meant by now. It was a quick evolution, the table rising up (I was going to get sea-sick, feeling the 'non-motion'!), my girls grabbing my arms and hoisting me off the table, and off we trekked.

"Uh, hurry!" I ordered.

No time for a leisurely, round-about walk this morning!

We took a short-cut across the field and stepped it up to a jog. They understood the urgency in my tone, at least.

"Guys," I said, "we can skip the bath this morning, really! I just need to pee, okay?"

They didn't listen to that. They didn't care. But we reached the ol' apple tree in double-quick time, so we all got to be happy, I guess.

I didn't wait for Ruth this time, I just let'r rip.

Yes, indeedy-do.

As I peed, I began to wonder, was that all humanity was? Just a peeing-pooping ... _thing_ to be fed and carried around?

Is that why the robots decided to off us all? Because we were a nuisance?

I wondered that.

Ruth did come around to me, but I was done already. She checked me out (_skinny girl checking out preggers chick_, I thought wryly, but then I blushed at my own off-humor), saw that I was done, so she went to the river herself.

What? Was she going for a skinny dip?

Eheh. Skinny girl going for a skinny dip.

You see why I don't have a sense of humor, right? Or, that is to say, nobody appreciated my sense of humor, so I just kept my jokes to myself.

But she didn't dive in, instead, she went into the water knee-deep, then she reached down into it, and, ... okay, she peeled back the surface of the water and molded it into a little ball, ... a little, jelly-ball.

"Uh, wow!" I gasped in surprise.

I mean, you see this in the movies, like Final Fantasy, or whatever flic Vic dragged me to, these special effects, and you just accept it, but I was like living in a special-effect world with robots and an infinite field of grass that grew out of nowhere and a Sun that wasn't a lightbulb but that actually looked like the Sun and gave off heat and stars and everything, but I was just in this thirty-by-thirty room, smaller than our house back in Connecticut but somehow there were more than one hundred robots watching me, impassively, from a much further distance than that and they were _in _this field-that-wasn't-a-field but a room, but somehow it was a field, somehow it was that big. My body knew it. Heck, we walked further than the distance of the walls that surrounded me before, and where did they go? Nobody came to remove them. I didn't hear them fall down or fold away, but before they were surrounding me, and now they were just ... gone.

Everything was science fiction around me, and that was my only reality now. _I _was the only thing that was real anymore, of everything in this false reality.

And knowing that, I didn't feel powerful or almighty or anything. In fact, I felt quite the opposite: I felt so alone and afraid, my every movement controlled by emotionless robots whose plans for me I had no clue.

Were they evil plans? I couldn't tell. I actually think they didn't even know what 'evil' was, nor care.

Ruth made another water-jelly and came back to me. Or met me half-way. My girl-guards hoisted me up by my arms away from my pee-puddle and brought me to Ruth as she came to meet us.

"Ah?" she offered one of the jellies.

"Thank you, Ruth," I said sweetly.

She _glowed._

I think she liked her name. Yes, indeed, I do think that.

'Despair,' or whoever she was, had to remove her grip on my left hand and move her grip to my shoulder so I could drink. She did not like this. First reaction I saw from her was a frown.

She took security seriously, apparently. I'd have to remember that when I made my great escape when they dropped their vigilance, like never.

I snorted. Four of them, and they were worried I was going to make a break for it? And escape where? Through the wall of the one-hundred onlookers?

I glared at Despair (or whoever) and shook my head, thinking: _ridiculous!_

_Yeah,_ I thought spitefully, _preggers woman makes her prison break from one-hundred amazons in broad daylight._

But I kept my spiteful thoughts to myself.

I put the water to my lips and gently began to suck.

I was getting good at this.

That's when Ruth slapped the other jelly on my vag, bursting the cool water all over it.

And that's when I _ooh_ed in shock: _"Waaaugh!" _I shouted, involuntarily pressing the jelly into my mouth, which caused it to explode all over my face and run down my chest.

_"Tee-hee!"_ Ruth's high-pitched giggle took me even more by surprise, and I looked at a girl with eyes crinkled with delighted merriment.

"Ruth, you ... _minx, you!"_ I shouted, affronted, and smacked her arm lightly.

Ruth bit her lip, trying to hold in her smile. She failed miserably.

"You," I said angrily, "have no concept of personal space, do you?"

She blinked at me with big, innocent eyes.

"Well, young lady," I scolded, "the next time you want to pull a stunt like that, you _warn_ a girl, for goodness sake!"

Ruth positively _glowed!_ It was like she was interpreting what I was saying to her was some kind of compliment, and, thinking it praise, she ate up every one of my words, as if she understood them, and my stern look she just _basked in._

The little _minx!_

_Jesus,_ though, she could turn on the cute. It was impossible to stay angry with that look for more than three seconds. Although I did try.

I sighed, giving up my anger grudgingly, but then my stomach spoke much louder than I did: it rumbled and growled, saying for all to hear: _hey, you gonna feed me soon here, or what? I'm __hungry__!_

Ruth's eyes went wide and round, and she hummed in surprise: _"Mmm?"_ she asked.

I bit my lip, and mumbled: "Sorry!' eyes downcast. Talk about a woman ruled by her stomach! How embarrassing!

But not to my tummy that growled again, loudly.

Ruth's eyes crinkled again, happily, and she hummed again, stepping into me, and rubbing my big, big belly: _"Hmmm!"_ she hummed happily, and her face was right in my face, and suddenly everything just stopped, because she was looking right at me, right into my eyes, and, me, so embarrassed from my hunger-pangs, caught her looks, glancing back, but then my eyes here glued to her, and I thought: _'Oh, my God! She's going to kiss me!'_

This girl ... I got it now ... she adored me. She _worshiped _me. She lived to serve me, and she basically got her rocks off just doing every menial thing for me, feeding me, cleaning me, in her own, uh, _'special' _way. And she just ate up my praise, or what she interpreted as my praise. I think I just gave her a mindgasm then. I think I did.

I think she was so turned on that she was going to be giving me breakfast, of all things, for goodness sake, and ... I think she was getting carried away here.

I was. Her eyes, her adulation, it was carrying me away. I was being swept away in her devotion to me.

The moment, fleeting, came, then, she visibly, forcibly, broke her gaze from mine, stepped back carefully, and turned away from me back to the stream.

I would've fallen over if I weren't being held up by the guards, for up to now it was Ruth's eyes that held me up, and with her look gone, I felt the ground beneath my feet pulling me down into it.

Ruth, I swear, _sashayed _back to the stream, using her youthful charm and elfin beauty to full effect, knowing my stunned eyes were still on her, and knowing full well she was just too cute for her own damn good!

The minx!

Have I mentioned that? I don't know if I've mentioned that.

She splashed into the water, gaily, and scooped out four more water-jellies, just scooping at the surface of the water, and rolling it, as it peeled off the top of the water, into a jelly-roll of water. It was simply incredible to watch, then, done, she balanced them carefully in the crook of her arm, and returned to just the river bank. She squatted down gracefully by the bank, and with her right hand, started drawing a circle in the clay-like sand.

Faster, and faster, and faster her hand spun in a tight, little circle, until I couldn't see her arm any more, it was just a blur, and smoke started to rise from the ground from where her fingers twirled.

And then her hand came to rest, and in it ...

Okay.

In it was a little, dun-colored disc.

I recognized it right away.

She rose, and treading over the hole she had just dug, she came back to me.

"You mean that thing ..." I gasped.

I blinked and swallowed hard.

"Ruth," I said shocked, "don't tell me you've been feeding me _dirt?"_

She didn't tell me. In fact, she was super-pleased that she had just made me breakfast.

"No way," I said. "No f-..." I stopped myself. _I shouldn't swear,_ I reminded myself. "No way." I said stunned.

Ruth _beamed._

I seriously had to reevaluate her being able to read my moods. It seemed she was reading them now perfectly, but opposite. _Totally _opposite!

My guards lowered me to my butt, then sat, flanking me, to my left and my right, two hands rested on my shoulders, keeping me in place.

"Hey!" I complained crossly to them.

But I couldn't complain too much. It looked like we were going to have a picnic! My first meal away from that God-damn table, and I finally found what the secret ingredient of that disc was: dirt.

Just great.

Shocking, yes, but I did a quick self-check internally and yes, now it did taste a little bit like a mud-pie on recollection, but if it really were dirt (and what was real anymore? I asked myself), then at least my body was fed by it. I was hungry, I ate the disc, or even only part of it, and it filled me right up. And there must have been _loads_ of vitamin-C in ... whatever it was, okay: dirt, because after it filled me up, it cleaned me right out. And didn't it ever!

If this were really dirt, and I couldn't disbelieve what I had just seen, then, ... oh, well, it was dirt, but it was keeping me and my baby alive.

Ruth sunk down across from me, and sat, cross-legged, holding her precious parcels of 'food' and jellies. Our knees brushed against each other.

She was pushing it, the boundaries: she was being more familiar with me than she needed to be. I think she was taking advantage of her entitled status of serving me.

I frowned at that, looking down at out touching knees.

She was totally unashamed. In fact, she smiled, pleased that I noticed, and glowed at my scrutiny.

This kid, really, needed a good smacking to knock her off her high horse, the Miss pleased-with-herself.

But then I remembered that I did smack her, and I remembered how much I hurt her, not physically, but inside, doing that. I could never do that again. Yes, she was riding high right now, but it was much, much better seeing her pleased, than crushing her, and seeing her sad. It broke my heart that she had been brought so low yesterday, and I was even more ashamed that I was the one who did that.

Ruth, however, was in too good a mood to be affected by my reflections. She extended the disc to me, hardened to smooth perfection.

I looked at it dubiously. "It's dirt, right?"

Ruth looked back at me expectantly, then her face became puzzled. She knew the routine, why didn't I? I bet that was what she was thinking, because it was written plain across her face.

She blinked rapidly, then withdrew the disc.

My tummy groaned.

And I sighed. Betrayed, again, by the belly.

Ruth did not titter at me, however. She extended the disc solicitously and waited.

_Dirt_ was all I thought, and I couldn't bring myself to take a bite of it, even now, being famished.

Ruth pursed her lips. She pulled back the offered disc, considering.

Obviously she was going to have to bring out the big guns.

She examined the disc and took a little bite, chewing thoughtfully, and made an obvious show of swallowing.

Seeing her eat did the trick. The pavlovian drool collected in my mouth, and this time that she offered the disc to me, I took a little nibble, too.

Yeah. It tasted exactly like clay. I mean, now that I saw where it came from, I couldn't get it out of my head what it was, and it just permeated everything about it. It was pretty tasteless before, so, I don't know, maybe the taste of dirt was one that my imagination imposed on it.

Whatever it was, it was just plain yucky.

But I wasn't one to complain. Mom put food on the table, and you ate it. Period. And if you didn't, then you just didn't eat.

There were days we were grateful to be eating anything at all, and Mom made the leftovers stretch and stretch and stretch, and she ate nothing, for meals at a time, so how could we possibly complain about the quality or blandness of the food put in front of us, when she put none in front of her.

One time, my little brother challenged her. He didn't say anything; he just didn't eat that night.

Did she eat his meal? No. She saved it for him for the morning, when he was really, really hungry, and he ate that, finally.

And I watched her. She didn't eat anything, at all. She never said anything to him, nor even hint.

I saw what real strength, real selfless sacrifice was. I saw it every day, in my mom.

So I ate this chunk of dirt that turned to paste in my mouth, so it really wasn't dirt, was it?

Ruth smiled, pleased, and put the disc on her lap, my eyes followed the motion, and I caught her tiny treasure, and I thought: garden of Eden.

She was naked, but she didn't have a clue. She didn't know to hide her nakedness, so, like Adam and Eve, she was clothed in dignity and innocence.

Was that possible? I wondered.

I realized I was staring, and looked away quickly.

Ruth saw, however, and looked down at her lap quizzically, the she looked back up at me, smiling lightly.

She just didn't have a clue.

"Sorry," I mumbled through the paste in my mouth, but I saw that only confused her. What would I be sorry for? She looked right at me, she ... kissed me and ... the other stuff, and it didn't bother her. Not one bit.

Why should I apologize for looking?

But I wasn't like her, like that, and probably like everything. Ruth looked human, but she was as far from a human was as ... I don't know, a space-alien from the planet Zanthul.

Wherever that was.

Ruth offered me a water-jelly, carefully, mindful of it, its surface tension, I surmised, and I took it with as much care.

"Thank you," I said, and took a long, luxurious draught, letting the water mix in with the paste and wash it down, and I felt the paste ease down my gullet and hit my tummy and start to dissolve into my system just as easy as you please.

It was like they specially designed the dirt to be compatible with my body.

And who knows? Maybe they did. Everything, the whole show, was just for me, I gathered, because what I saw from the glimpses outside this room, this field, this whatever, was just a living nightmare, pitch black, all dark and angry red.

Hell on Earth.

And they lived in that. Or whatever they did. They were fine with that, in fact: they had no trouble tearing apart Alicia in that pitch blackness.

I suddenly wasn't hungry nor thirsty anymore.

I put what was left of the jelly beside me. I looked at Ruth, and smiled bravely at her.

She saw. She looked very seriously at me, still.

I dissolved into tears.

"Ruth," I cried, "I want to go home. Can I please, please just go home?"

Ruth smiled bravely back at me. She understood.

But what could she do? 'Home' wasn't home anymore. There wasn't going to be any farm in Connecticut with chickens and rabbits and rows of lettuce and tomatoes and fields of corn. What there was, what was left, was a nuclear wasteland above ground and a stinking pit with dwindling supplies in the shelter back at Middletown High School.

And that was what I wanted to go home to?

Ruth put the disc aside and then put the jellies on the ground beside it, one by one.

She then scooted around and gathered me up in her arms, brushing off my imperious guards' hands on my shoulders.

She held me and hummed to me as I cried. _"Hmm-mmm," _a high call, then a falling grace note. She repeated it. _"Hmm-mmm," _and it was a gentle scold, _'there, there," _she scolded gently. _Pull yourself together,_ it seemed to say in her humming _'there, there,'_ sing-song.

...

Okay, I have a question. How do you blow your nose in a place like this. I mean: there's just us girls in our all-togethers, and not a hanky in sight!

Ruth got to wash my face with one of the jellies she had handy.

I think she'd be killer in a water-balloon fight. That, or she took secret pleasure in getting me all wet.

'Wet,' as in water, and that's all I meant, thank you very much!

After Ruth cleaned my face, we resumed our little picnic, with our mud pies and water-jellies, and all we were missing was tuna casserole and potato salad.

As Ruth fed me, I saw something different. One of the spectators detached herself from the distant circle of girls surrounding us and walked purposely toward our group.

That was odd. I stopped eating and watched her approach. It wasn't Dr. Abe. It definitely wasn't her. Dr. Abe was a serious and disapproving, doctorly, ... uh, teen, while this girl held herself more erect even than her, and there was an underlying current of excitement that she kept trying, and kept failing, to squash.

So she just tried to hide it from me. Unsuccessfully.

This one was fangirling it, big time. She came up to Destruction (or whoever, for chrissake!), touched her on the shoulder, and Destruction just got up and walked away, the same way Susan had come.

Yeah: Susan. As soon as I saw her, I knew her name, just like that. The way she carried herself, the way she dismissed the other girl, ...

You see, Susan Dombrowski was the Valedictorian in Gaitlinburg-Pittman High School. I'd like to say I gave her a run for her money for the top slot, but it was no contest from day one. Susan just knew she was better, not than me, she didn't care about me, because I didn't even register on her radar: she didn't care about me because I was just like everybody else, so far beneath her she didn't even notice.

This girl, now Susan, was like the total opposite to the Susan I knew back in high school. Susan back then didn't care about me, this one did.

I mean, seriously: she was calm and cool and self-possessed on the outside, but I could see she was almost vibrating in place, just to put her hand on my shoulder. Her excitement was palpable.

I could have actually eaten it, her fangirling, instead of the dirt disc. I smiled at myself at that. It would've tasted a whole lot better, too, ... but it probably wasn't all that filling.

So that's how our picnic breakfast went: Ruth, feeding me, and Susan, behind me, but her eyes eating up everything I did, like she was a teenage at a pop concert at whatever trash they called these days, and excuse me if I'm not 'with it.'

I frowned back at Susan as I ate. "You wanna turn it down a bit, the wattage?" I layered in the sarcasm.

Ruth didn't like me talking to her.

And Susan picked up my displeasure right away. The wattage not only dimmed. It went right out. She was crestfallen. In fact, Ruth took my two tight slaps better yesterday than this now.

_"Jesus," _I muttered, pissed, and Susan saw that and down the spiral she spun.

But I wasn't pissed at her; I was pissed at myself.

Didn't I just have to rain on everybody's parade?

I sighed. My fault, so I may as well fix this rainy parade.

Ruth was offering more dirt-disc, but I shook my head and twisted around to face Susan.

She didn't know what to think about that. None of them did. They were supposed to be guarding with me, so I guess I shouldn't have been fraternizing, but this wasn't the Army, so I just didn't care.

I smiled a sad, lopsided grin at Susan. She blinked at me nonplussed.

"When I saw you coming across the field to here, Bam!" I said, "just like that, I knew your name. Do you want to know what it is?"

Susan blinked at me. She didn't know what to think. It looked like she wanted to ask the others for help or moral support, but she was scared to look away from me. _Must be some protocol_, I thought.

Polite robots! Who would've thought!

"Well," I continued, "there was this girl at my high school, and you don't look a thing like her, but she was smart, and she was sweet, ... when she took the trouble to be, and she was confident, like she owned the place, you know?"

I paused. "Kinda like you, you know?" I asked, confirming. "I mean, it just looks like you _know_ what you want, and you just know you're gonna get your way, right?"

I thought about that for a second. "Kinda like me, in my own way, but me, I just know what's right, and I just do it, but you ..." I smiled at her. "You just know you're the best that there is, so you know you're getting your way, 'cause nobody else really matters to what you want, am I right?"

Susan's lips were pressed firmly together. She didn't dare agree with me, but I saw it in her eyes.

_Cocky little bitch, _I thought admiringly at her.

She did smirk at that, which made me wonder if I were that obvious or if the robots had magic mind-reading powers.

_Nah,_ I thought dismissively, because Ruth was the perfect counterexample there: I scold her, she glows under the attention.

I smirked, serviced by a minx and guarded by a prima donna. Quite the cast of characters I was being surrounded with. I wondered if they were being chosen especially for their quirkiness.

"Well," I said, "her name was Susan, just like yours is, isn't it?"

I put it right to her.

She looked right back at me, Susan, and she got really quiet, and she did break her level gaze with me for a moment.

Then she looked right back into my eyes, and the Sun rose in her face.

If I were Prince Charming, and if I had just proposed to her, right now, I don't think it would've made her as happy as she was now, but instead of being bubbly about it, she took this, her name, and she held it inside her heart, pondering it.

But now there was a rock solidity to her, she was no longer sorrowful: her quiet sadness had turned to a quiet joy, but just as powerful.

I turned back to Ruth, smiling, that was one mess that I caused cleaned up.

But I turned to another one.

Ruth was not happy. Not at all. Now it was her bubbliness that was struck down, and she was just ... sad, and a little bit empty inside. Her look was betrayed.

I sighed to myself, looking at her.

"Ruth," I said softly, ... and there were a million things I could've said to her, but her hurt look ... there was nothing for me to say. I reached out, instead, and held her hand in mine, guiding the disc to my mouth, and I took a small bite. "Hmm?" I said.

Susan was Susan now, but Ruth was still _my_ Ruth, and I hope she got that.

Her lips twitched up in a sad, little smile. I don't think she got it. I think she was just hurting and saw I was trying to be nice to her in sympathy, and that can actually hurt more. But she put a brave face to me, trying to show that she could bear this, and she smiled as she fed me.

Susan was fine now, too. Instead of vibrating in place with fangirlish excitement, which I found annoying, her hand on my shoulder was now calm and confident, and, although she sat a bit closer to me than the other three behind me did now, I didn't get that she was lording it over everyone, and she wasn't rubbing her elevated status into Ruth's face, which was a relief for me.

Susan was just like Susan back in high school: _I'm just better, is all._ To her, it wasn't bragging. It was a fact. That's all.

...

"Ruth," I said. "Can I please, please just show you something, huh?"

Breakfast was done, and Susan and the others were going to pick me up again, but I shook of Susan's hand on my arm and addressed Ruth directly.

Ruth had already stood, so she was looking at me quizzically. There I sat, everyone standing around me.

"Look," I commanded, and started to dig into the dirt, pulling up the tall grass in tufts with one hand, the roots gave after a good, hard tug. The earth underneath was moist and rich, perfect for planting fruits, like tomatoes, and vegetables like green bell peppers and snap peas and, heck, even a pumpkin patch!

Farmer-girl in me coming to the fore.

But I dug a good hole, a foot 'round and a foot deep. It didn't take but a moment, and as I dug, Ruth squatted down right beside me and started to help until I swatted her hands away impatiently. "You just look," I scolded.

"There!" I said, done. "Now... _oof!" _I tried to lift myself up from my sitting position, but my big belly was quiet comfy low to the ground, and made me getting up nearly impossible. Susan and one of the other girls stepped right in and hoisted me right up, like a feather.

_"Whoop!"_ Perhaps they hoisted me up a little _too_ fast. Ruth rose carefully, facing me.

"So," I said, huffing, catching my breath, "okay, you get it, see? I dig the hole, I poop in the hole, I cover it up. Nice and tidy, and nobody has to clean up poop nor touch it, see?"

Ruth regarded me and the hole unhappily. I could see it written on her face: _new, different, does not compute._

"Oh, for God's sake, Ruth," I burst out, "don't knock it until we've tried it at least once, okay? _Jeez!"_

Robots here were just so touchy, weren't they!

My tumbly was rumbly after the rest, the meal and the wee bit of digging I did.

"Okay, magician," I waved to Ruth magisterially, "wave your magic wand."

Ruth had the most dumbfounded expression on her face.

"You know," I said knowingly, "do that thing you did before to make me poop."

I had the sneaking suspicion that she did have this magic make-me-poop superpower. Or that she spiked the dirt with laxative, and that's why the need pressed on me so hard after I ate. Either way.

Well, I reflected ruefully, at least she didn't spike my drink with roofies. But, then again, she didn't need to. She, they all, just did whatever they wanted to do to me, and since none of them understood one word I said, they just didn't care what I thought about it.

Except, of course, when Ruth stayed with me last night. I, like, owed her, big time, for that one. I really needed her then, and she didn't let me down.

Ruth pursed her lips at me now, however, not wanting to let on that she knew what was up.

"Maybe we need to go for a walk again?" I offered.

And then Ruth blinked.

_Whammo!_ If she had punched me in the stomach, it would have been less of a shock, the sudden cramping through my midsection. I actually screamed in pain and surprise, and I almost threw up because my whole body just let go so hard. Again, if Susan and the other girl weren't holding onto me, I would have fallen over.

But I did, you know: aim for the little pit I had dug. It would've been a shame to have had that gone to waste.

This time it went quickly, as before, but this time I was now anticipating that empty feeling that happened afterwards, so that wasn't so much of a shock, and I recovered more quickly from my powerful evacuation. But still, afterwards, I felt almost sick, feeling a bit green around the gills, and my skin felt clammy.

"I-I... _told you!" _I snarled at Ruth.

You want proof? Exhibit A: me. Last two days she takes me under the water and reams me out, but at least she was gentle down there. Above the water?

It seemed like anything goes with this bitch and her magic blinking eyes.

And she had the _gall_ to pass it off with her innocent look!

I had a bit of gall myself now, to smack that innocent _'who? me?'_ look right off her face, making me poop like that, and then playing it off as if she had nothing to do with it, but I was smart, see: I was onto this one.

The minx.

I was also done, and Susan and the other girl started to drag me away from the stinky pit.

No, you jerks, not my armpits, okay?

"No!" I shouted, stopping them in their tracks. Ruth also gave me a confused look, too.

"Just wait!" I barked. "This was the thing I wanted to show you guys, see?"

I kicked the pile of dirt I had left, covering my ... well, okay, then, my shit, okay?

"Look," I said. "I took care of my own mess. It's covered completely, and nobody got their hands dirty handling ... you know ... poop, see?"

The girls looked at me like I was the weirdest chick they've ever laid eyes on.

I suppose, if they've never seen a person, then that was actually true, being that I was the _only_ chick they've ever seen.

A chick on a mission: good hygiene, for goodness sake!

"Now that we've put that one to bed," I dictated, "I'll thank you to clean my own self!"

I addressed nobody in particular, but I glared hard very specifically at Ruth when I finished my pronouncement.

Her eyes narrowed, just ever so slightly at me, and my lip curled up into a snarl.

_Bring it, bitch!_ spearing the thought at her, daring her to bring-_fucking-_it.

I actually liked her. I liked her a lot. She was a sweet girl, always the victim, but she always got her way. Me, there was no sweet nor victim anywhere on me, but I usually got my way. Vic was a 'strong man,' but he was such a pushover it wasn't even a challenge (I could use sweet at times with him, when I was feeling nice), but this one here?

Ruth was a challenge.

Her eyes glinted back at me: _challenge accepted._

My girls 'lead' me to the stream bank _('dragged'_ me, more like), and Ali-... whoops, sorry, _Ruth_ led the parade, a proud, lithesome wench, just waiting to get her tight, little fanny paddled if she was thinking about taking on me this time.

Particularly after my announcement to the whole world, and everything.

She went into the stream, knee-deep, and turned, extending her hands to me.

"'Sokay," I passed off her invite nonchalantly. "I've got this one, Ruth; I'm good."

Ruth looked at me uncomprehendingly for a second.

Then I saw it in her, the moxie. She seemed to gird herself, rolling up her nonexistent sleeves, as it were, and strode right back to me, purposefully.

"No, Ruth," I backpedalled verbally.

Didn't work. She took my hands from my girls, and she tread back, bringing us both toward the center of the stream.

Bitch was smiling sweetly as she did it, too, that's what killed me. There wasn't one trace of malice on her face, and still she got exactly what she wanted, and I couldn't do a thing to stop her.

"Ruth, you are going to get in _so_ much trouble if you don't let me go _right now!"_ I still fought on. I had to, do you understand me? It was my pride on the line now, and there was no way I was giving up without a fight.

And here was my fight: we were under before I could say one more word, and she held me to her in a gentle grip that I wouldn't be able to break free from, even armed with a crowbar, I'm willing to bet, if I were a betting girl.

This time ... well, what was the point of fighting anymore? Ruth had me now, and if I struggled and somehow managed to break free, what then? Swim up the the surface for less than one second so Ruth could grab my leg and pull me back down under before I could do anything else?

So I relaxed, completely, in her embrace, and I let her breathe her air into me. Ruth's eyes crinkled approvingly, obviously pleased that her little human charge, her little human _pet_, could learn this simple thing of learning to take the breath she was given while underwater.

I felt like glaring at Ruth, but I just let her hold me to her and tried to relax. The less resistance I offered down below, the sooner this embarrassing routine would be over.

And, down below, Ruth brought her hand to my pussy lips, and rubbed them gently. My eyes widened at that. Normally it was her thigh. This was totally different.

Ruth was watching me intently now, and the breath she pushed into me ...

Her lips felt softer, less needing to keep a good seal so no water could seep into air she forced into me and more ...

More needy.

And her fingers seemed to want to make sure my lips were really clean, both inner and outer, and she spent a good, long time making sure to work the cleansing water on every surface.

And she made sure her cleansing fingers were there, guiding me along.

It was getting harder and harder for me to draw the line between her job and her desire, and my clit was downright curious to know what the hell was going on now.

And her palm just oh-so-happened to bump and rub against it a couple of times. Just accidently-like.

_"Ruth! FUCK!" _I screamed into her mouth. I was seriously losing it here, and something big and bad was going to happen, and right now if somebody didn't do something about this.

Ruth did.

She tried to position herself in front of me, you know: fully-in front of me so that ...

So that our pussies could touch, now that mine was squeaky clean... well, not so squeaky, because my was wet, and it wasn't because of the water.

God! I had not had a good fuck since for-fucking-ever (literally true, Vic was a ... um, 'kind' lover and not very creative in bed), and my body needed this more than anything in the world because of all the built-up tension of, you know, a nuclear holocaust and then my captivity now. My body needed this. Ruth could sense this. Little amoralistic Ruth thought she was helping me, and that's all it was to her: her helping me.

Or was it? Did she want this as badly as I wanted this?

I mean: my body wanted this. My mind was very, very conflicted right now, and I was mentally fighting this, and what it meant, for all I was worth, ... even as my body tried to help Ruth.

But try as Ruth did to position me to her, it just didn't work. My big, big belly with an excitable little girl inside was getting way too much in the way, so Ruth would either have to let go of my mouth, and attack my pussy with hers, which seemed her intent, but there was also no way she was letting my mouth go from hers either.

She saw before I was no water-breather, like she seemed to be.

So she wouldn't let me drown, either.

Heh. Drown. Like: in the sea of love ...

_Sorry!_

So the wrong time for my corny jokes!

Ruth was not in a silly mood anymore, either. She was dead serious in her intent, and the frustration was evident on her face. She _did_ need this as much as I did.

Perhaps more, and that, her want, just catapulted me beyond the point of no return, so as Ruth gave up her attempt on pressing my pussy to hers, I moaned into her mouth with a desperate want.

And that drove Ruth absolutely crazy. She growled into my mouth, a low, angry snarl that turned me on as much the intensity of it scared me. I whined into her snarl and even as she gave up her pressing assault on my pussy, her hands, both of them whipped around to my backside as she shifted position again, pressing her mouth hard against mind, putting a lot of pressure on my bent-back neck. Then her hands grabbed my ass-cheeks and pulled them apart unceremoniously. There was no gentleness this time from little Ruth: she was rubbing my crack, cleaning it was a few rough, impatient strokes, then, spreading my crack with her fingers, forcing my anus to pucker, one finger plunged right in there, stroking me, massaging me, inside.

Then a second finger joined the first, and the forcefulness of her attack, the suddenness of it, was almost painful. But, at the same time, it wasn't, because, you know: third time being a charm and all, I had actually got a bit used to this, accustomed to it, almost.

The front side wasn't neglected, either. She forced her thigh between my legs and pressed it demandingly against my ... okay, my wanton cunt, okay? And her finger behind, pushed, prodded and pressed me against her leg so I stayed there if I knew what was good for me.

Then, without waiting any further, her fingers went to work, and she started to fuck me up the ass with a vengeance.

Because there was no ambiguity about this now. This wasn't sweet little Ruth gently making sure my ass was nice and clean after my morning poop. No, this was snarling little Ruth giving me the ass-fucking of my life.

And, you know, stupid me, so slow on the uptake, I realized I needed this as much as she already knew that I did. But my body didn't care what my mind came to realize nor when it did, either.

Because as Ruth savagely ass-fucked me, I found myself humping her leg for all I was worth now, desperately moaning into her snarl, and I looked up to the surface and saw more than one hundred pairs of blued eyes watching us get it on like two mangy bitches in heat.

So I just shut my eyes to all that. I just blocked them all out of my mind, and bore into the kiss Ruth's mouth was mauling me with, and fucked her back with all my might as Ruth snarled and reamed my poor abused slutty little asshole with her insistent little fingers, ramming into me over and over again.

Then ...

Yeah.

The orgasm hit me so hard I lost my fucking mind. It rolled through me like a tidal wave, and I screamed into Ruth's mouth. No, I fucking roared for all I was worth, but Ruth pressing down on me hurt like a son of a bitch, so I twisted and turned and screamed into the air as I came.

There was no air. There was a lot of water though.

But my body didn't know that, and didn't care. I just had to breathe and to scream at the top of my lungs, and breathe, no not breathe, swallow, and breathe, no not breathe again, swallow again, and try to scream and ...

And that's when I lost it, drowning in my own scream and the last thing I felt was Ruth's desperate lips trying to force themselves against mine to press a savage life-giving kiss to my screaming, choking, dying mouth.

...

Okay.

Where was I again?

My head hurt like hell, but my body felt worse: somebody had been using me for a punching bag, or so it felt like.

The Sun-not-Sun streamed down on me, and I was lying on the ground, the tall, tall grass, more like wheat pressed down by my body, forming a tickly, slightly scratchy mattress that actually felt kind of nice. I mean, it wasn't like that damned table that I've spent so many uncomfortable hours tied down to.

Ruth was kissing me...

No.

Her mouth was pressed to mine, and she was breathing soft breaths into mine, and her hand was on my chest, over my heart, and my chest felt heavy and hurt, almost bruised, like somebody _had_ been punching on my heart, over and over again.

Suddenly Ruth was ripped from my side and cast aside.

"No," I whispered weakly, and reached out to her. "Ruth!" I called out.

Then I saw it wasn't Ruth at all.

It was Susan, and my mistake? That hurt her. I saw it.

"Sorry," I said.

They all, really, did look alike, and you had to be paying attention to see the difference.

Suddenly, rough hands grabbed my head, turning me forcefully to look up into furious eyes. My head was turned left, then right, then look straight up into eyes that camera-flashed blue, blinding me.

"Hey!" I protested weakly, trying to raise my hands to shield my eyes. I think I was going to be sick. I felt so weak from the onslaught of before, and being manhandled then blinded like this was not helping.

But that was just Dr. Abe's way, for it was her. Not the real Dr. Abe, because the _real_ Dr. Abe, back in Connecticut, was actually a very nice lady for a doctor. This one was anything but as she poked me and prodded me, bathing my whole body in blue, twice, with her scanning eyes and then checking me physically, my head, my arms, my legs, and paying special attention to my belly, putting her ear right on my tummy and listening intently, then pushing and pulling at it, like as if she almost wanted to rip the baby out, so she could exam her personally.

And that gave me a bone-chilling idea. What were they holding me for?

Maybe they weren't holding me at all. Maybe they weren't interested in me at all.

Maybe they were feeding me and keeping me clean (big time) and healthy, not for me, but for ...

I couldn't continue this line of thought, because that lead to all sorts of black terror of what would happen not to me, but to my baby after she was born into this world of an endless field of wheat and robots ... and no me, after they disposed of me, like how they got rid of Alicia when she delivered me (or, me because of my baby), and they were just ... done with her.

"I'm ... I'm fine," I gasped out to the relentless Dr. Abe, testing her, seeing if she even cared about me at all.

I got my answer. She didn't give a fuck what I said, she just continued her examination of my body — the useless shell around my baby — making sure I was alive and breathing. Then she scanned my stomach with her blue-blue glowing eyes, just one more time. Just to be sure.

'Precious cargo,' indeed.

When she was assured everything was okay with me _(or, more importantly, _I thought, _with my baby),_ she got up and just walked away disappearing into the air behind the ring of girls all watching me, or my stomach.

Susan picked herself and came to me. You could see she was insulted by being thrown around, so there was no love lost between her and Dr. Abe.

I watched this like a hawk.

When you're the prisoner, you watch everything, just looking for that one opportunity, that one shard that gives you that hope of freedom.

Susan helped me to sit up, but not any further. It was obvious to her she didn't trust that I could stand in my weakened condition. She put her arms around me, cradling me under my shoulders and knees and just ... lifted me.

She picked me up like I weighted a feather and carried protesting me back to the table.

"Susan," I said, "I can walk."

She frowned, but ignored what I said. The other guards closed around her carrying me, and she gently placed me back on the table, and the straps when right back on.

I sighed.

But Susan was right. Her simply carrying me exhausted me, and I felt the fatigue grip me in its vise.

My eyes were closing as my butt hit the table and the straps came on.

"Where's Ruth?" I asked Susan.

She put her hand on my shoulder and smiled gently.

I slept.

...

Something was terribly wrong.

The girl with the tray?

It wasn't Ruth.

I could tell right away.

The little minx was gone, and she was replaced by a Stepford-sister, but this one?

Nothing. There was no light, no life in her eyes.

I looked at her, then I looked at Susan.

"What's going on?" I demanded, my voice trembling.

The girl took a jelly from the tray and put it to my mouth. I didn't drink it. I turned my head away. Her hand followed my mouth, so I jerked my head the other way, really quickly. The jelly exploded water all over my face.

She picked up another jelly, lifelessly, and brought it to my mouth.

_"NO!" _I shrieked, and jerked my head away.

The jelly exploded against my cheek at the fembot tried to angle it to my mouth.

I glared hard at Susan. _"Where is Ruth!" _I shouted at her.

Susan looked at me, and she looked away, but not in shame.

I followed her gaze.

Dr. Abe was striding toward us, another girl in tow. She brushed right past me and shoved the girl that was trying to feed me onto her ass.

The girl picked herself up, and Abe grabbed her by the arm and dragged her away, treating her like a piece of luggage.

The girl she brought along picked up a jelly and showed it to me.

I looked at her, the Dr. Abe's retreating back.

I put two and two together.

I looked at Susan.

I tried to say something.

But there was nothing to say.

Ruth was gone.

I glanced at the new girl, and she looked hopefully back at me. She really wanted me to play along, at least for her sake.

I turned away.

I saw her glance at Susan, and her face said: _Help!_

I bit my lip and tried to swallow, but the lump in my throat was too big, and I couldn't swallow past it.

I looked back at Susan.

"It was Dr. Abe, wasn't it?" I demanded.

Susan just looked back at me.

I did manage to swallow this time, but it wasn't helping at all, and I felt the tears coming on, even as I tried so desperately to fight them off, trying so hard not to care.

I sniffled.

"Piece of advice for you, Susan," I whispered. "Run."

I gulped. "First it was 'Licia. Now Ruth. You're next, you know that. She just ..." I took a deep breath. "She just waits until I care, even a little bit, about something, and then she crushes it, doesn't she."

Susan didn't respond.

I smiled weakly at her. "Run," I said, "while you still have the chance, huh?"

There was nothing from Susan now. Maybe she was being smart: she saw what happened to the ones who reacted to me.

Susan was always smart.

Dr. Abe returned. She was not happy.

If they let me up from this table, I'd give her a few more things to be unhappy about. But they didn't. She collected the other girl, who looked at me sadly as she was dragged away. I wanted to feel sorry for her, but I just didn't have room for feelings anymore.

The tray followed them as they left.

I guess I was going without supper today.

Yeah. My nap was on the longish side.

I needed to pee. I peed. Two of my guards, not Susan, I noted, ripped the soiled cushion out from under me and replaced it with a new one. I didn't know where they got it. I didn't care.

...

Twilight.

"Just tell me," I said to Susan. "Just tell me what happened to her."

Susan looked back at me dispassionately.

"To Ruth," I emphasized. "Please. Please just tell me. Is she okay? Ruth. Is she okay?"

Susan looked away.

"Please," I pleaded.

Susan knew what I was asking, I saw it in her face, even though she tried to hide it, tried to pretend I was just talking and that was all. But she knew.

"Please, Susan," I begged. "Just, ... please."

If Susan were a heartless bitch, my words wouldn't have affected her, or, even, she could take sadistic pleasure in my pain and sorrow if she were that kind of person.

But Susan wasn't like that, not even the Susan in high school. She was, come to think about it, a pretty nice kid back then. It was just that she was better than all the rest of us, and she knew it.

But she wasn't a heartless bitch. Not even by a long shot.

"Susan, please," I said.

Susan sighed, and then she looked really pissed in the fading light.

Pissed at herself.

The air in front of me rippled open, tearing a hole in nothing, and, you know, shaky-cam, right? It looked like that: running and running behind a fembot, and up ahead was the stream with the apple tree, and as the cam ran toward the scene, Ruth emerged from the water carrying me in her arms.

I was still.

Quickly she lay me on the ground and started breathing into me and pumping my chest.

But by then, the cam caught up to us, and two hands reached out and ripped Ruth off me and threw her violently away from me.

The cam pulled back.

It was Dr. Abe.

She glanced down at my still form in passing as she charged at Ruth, full-tilt. Dr. Abe's face was twisted with fury and hate. She pointed to Susan, then to my body as she barreled into Ruth, her shoulder connecting solidly with Ruth's midsection as Ruth tried to get up, her arms reaching out for me.

The impact knocked them both back hard, and Dr. Abe kept pushing into the charge, knocking them both further away from me.

_"Naaaaaawh!" _Ruth cried, and it was a sound of ...

It was the sound of a mother losing her child.

Dr. Abe didn't care, she just rammed into Ruth, over and over again.

"No," I whispered in horror, watching this play out before me.

But it was relentless, the scene, and inevitable. I tried to wipe my eyes, but, of course, I was strapped down, so all I could do is watch through bleary eyes as Dr. Abe slammed into Ruth, over and over again, and watch Ruth not even fight, not even anything, all she wanted to do is to get back to me.

All she wanted to do is to get back to me.

"You stupid ... idiot, Ruth, fight!" I whimpered.

She didn't listen. She didn't hear me. This was way, way in the past, and my words were far too late.

Dr. Abe had pushed her so far back, she pushed her to the distant circle of girls who separated to give the one-sided fight room.

Or, no.

The air changed. A solid doorway formed in the air in the gap formed by the girls in the circle moving aside, and Dr. Abe slammed Ruth on her back right through that solid, invisible nothingness.

Ruth felt the change, half here and half _else_where, and her back tightened as she looked into the invisible abyss.

_"Naaaawwhhhh!" _she howled desperately, and grabbed hold of the nothingness, which turned out to be as solid as a brick wall, her hands on either side of the portal, her feet hooked on, the only things anchoring her on _this_ side, for everything else of her was almost translucent, fading into the _other_ side.

But she hung on for dear life, and started to try to pull herself back in, back here.

That's when Dr. Abe gave one more shove, and Ruth's arm bent back, bent horribly wrong, and I heard a horrible shriek coming from Ruth, not from her mouth, but from her whole body as her arms twisted and bent in a way that they would never be able to be bent back.

The damage was done. Permanently.

But still she fought, and it was pitiful to watch, her bent-back arms trying to pull her back into this world, back to me.

Dr. Abe didn't push her again, she just turned from her and walked away, walked back toward my still form and Susan over me.

And Ruth cried, _"Naa-"_

Then _pip._

And the doorway closed.

With Ruth's hands and feet still on this side.

Her severed hands fell to the ground by her feet, and a deathly silence hung over the field of a scream suddenly silenced.

The circle of girls reformed, filling the gap as if had never been there.

As if Ruth had never been there.

Dr. Abe didn't even look back. She walked right up to Susan and delivered a vicious kick to her midsection, hooking her body and revealing me who was just coming out of it.

And the portal in front of me, showing me this, dimmed, shrunk to a point, then _pip! _It was gone.

Just like Ruth was.

It was night now, the stars were above, there was a very light breeze wafting across the field, making the tall grass undulate in a lazy wave. There was no moon.

Were the stars real stars? Was anything real anymore?

Ruth was real. And now she was gone, too, and that was real, too.

Because it really hurt.

But I didn't feel it. I felt nothing. I looked at Susan, and I just ...

I turned my head from her and slept.

...

Morning.

Breakfast.

Poor girl. She didn't last one minute before Dr. Abe hauled her off. Dr. Abe's face was furious and if she were speaking, she'd actually be snarling: _'You incompetent __fuck__!'_

Dr. Abe was not pleased.

She marched right back after she shoved the non-protesting girl out of _here_ through a portal she formed for just long enough to toss the girl the fuck out.

She stood over me for a minute seething.

Then she rocked back on her heels and got a thoughtful look.

She looked to Susan, then she looked to me, and she stepped back, one, two, three paces, watching us both.

Susan got quite the thoughtful look herself.

You could tell this was _not_ in her job description, and you could tell she knew the score: her job was on the line, right now, and what would happen to her if she failed?

What happened to the other girls Dr. Abe tossed out on their asses? What happened to Ruth? Well, ... what was left of Ruth.

Susan approached the tray purposefully. She took a water-jelly in her hand and held it up for me to see.

I turned my head from her. "Susan," I said coldly, "I've wanted to say this to you since high school, ..."

And I let my thoughts say the rest: _but I was just raised better._

Or so I thought.

So I didn't say it.

She didn't deserve it.

She wasn't even Susan, who didn't deserve it, either, my ill-will, and for what?

Petty high school jealousy. I thought I grew out of that.

Susan and I could have been friends, even, in high school, not frenemies. She was the only one in high school who gave me a run for my money, but her family had money, and my family didn't.

No, that's not fair. She won, fair and square. And, anyway, she went to college, and I went to college, so why was I still bitter, ten years later?

But I was, and I used that bitterness now.

Susan came up to me, lifted my head gently, and put the jelly to my lips.

I kept my lips so tightly sealed she would've had to have used a crowbar to pry them open.

Susan sighed, not in exasperation, but sadly, in defeat.

Dr. Abe had lost patience a long, long time ago, and she wasn't about to countenance a long goodbye. She yanked Susan away from me by her arm and stalked off with her.

"Good move, Susan," I said sadly to her retreating back, feeling abandoned and betrayed, even though I was the one at fault here now.

But isn't that the whole psychology of torture and imprisonment? The whole good cop, bad cop thing so you feel bad for betraying the good cop?

I didn't know anymore. I tried not to care, ...

But I knew this was all my fault.

Susan didn't. She kept her head held high. She had lost this time, perhaps for the first time ever? But she was uncowed, undefeated, unlike the other girls that Dr. Abe kicked out on their asses. She walked alongside Dr. Abe, and was escorted out, not thrown out.

Me, on the other hand... I felt Dr. Abe's eyes on me from the portalway she had just closed behind Susan.

Then, in a flash, her hair streaming, she _ran_ right up to me, grabbed a jelly from the tray and smashed it in my face. Water got in and streamed down my eyes and nose and mouth.

I spit it out. I tried to spit it on her, but I just ended up by spitting it all over myself.

She ignored my comically-inane gesture of defiance, grabbed the disc, easily pried my jaw open and shoved some of it in my mouth. She then squeezed a water jelly, the whole thing, over my forced-open mouth, then she slammed my mouth shut and kept it closed tight, until I was forced to swallow, just from it naturally going down my throat.

She watched me, gloating in my helplessness, and her look said: _'Here's how much a say you have in all of this!'_

But here's the thing, and it wasn't intentional on my part, but ... you put a person through hell, and she happens to be pregnant, and you force-feed her ...?

Acid reflux, you know?

I vomited it all right back up. I tried to turn my head, but some of my own vomit got on me on my face and chest, some of it got on the table, and some of it got on her, because I started to choke on my own puke, so she was forced to pull me up off the table and bend me over so I could puke properly on the ground.

The food, ... dirt, whatever it was?

It tasted worse coming up, if that were at all possible.

One of my guards took away my puke-y table, so I collapsed on the ground beside my own stinking puke. My two remaining guards hovered by me, helplessly, like they didn't know what to do around Dr. Abe: too much security and exacerbate my situation? Not enough security allowing me to make my grand escape?

Ha, ha. As if.

Dr. Abe sat on the ground beside me and put her head into her hands, like her head was too heavy for her neck to hold it up.

I looked at her out of the corner of my eye, because I was too weak now even to lift my head. "Con-grat-u-la-tions," I slurred sarcastically though a sore throat and bitter-tasting mouth. "You forced everything to go exactly the way you wanted it to go and fucking ex-ed everybody who got in your way, and _this_ is what you got. Happy?"

Dr. Abe didn't lift her head from her hands.

I felt absolutely no pity for this despot.

"Here's something for you, you cunt," I whispered vehemently, "you ... _never_ ... will get what you want from me. I'll die first, and you'll have to rip my baby from my womb, and then where will you be? Do you know what it takes to care for a child? to raise her? to nurture her? to _love_ her?"

I glared at her. "No, you don't. You don't know fuck about _fuck!_ And she'll die, too, the second you get pissed at her and try to do to her what you tried to do to me. And we both saw how well that worked, didn't we?"

An angry, bitter tear fell from my eye onto the fertile ground. I bemoaned the futility of it all. This whole illusion, created just for me, and all of it, just ... wasted.

"Bitch," I cursed her sullenly, and then I was silent. So much for me being a Christian girl, being raised better than this. Fail. If I saw me, behaving this way, I would not have recognized the scumbag I had just become with my hateful, spiteful words. There would not have been enough soap in the world for my mom to wash out my mouth, ... that is, if she didn't disown me first.

I was ashamed of myself, sinking so low as this.

Dr. Abe sprang up and stalked off, furious. I watched her go, but I didn't gloat. I just lay there, defeated and empty.

There was nothing left in me to gloat.

The guard materialized by me with a new table, and I was lifted back up onto the bed. Somebody, not one of my now-three guards, came and buried my puke.

I thought of Ruth, and sobbed, turning my head away.

My guards put their hands on the table and pushed it off. They walked and walked, pushing my table floating in the air along. Change in scenery?

I didn't know.

I didn't care.

How long can a pregnant woman last before she starves herself to death?

We'd find out soon enough, wouldn't we?

* * *

**A/N:** Land of plenty. That's the U.S.A., and do you know how many people today are below the poverty line, and how many millions of children are skipping meals because all they can have are the school-supplied ones and whatever Mom can scrap together that day. Or maybe not that day?

Millions.

And we complain about what we have.

I have to remember to be grateful for what I have.

**um, yeah, ps:** Happy St. Valentine's Day. So, okay, this is a `phfina-to-the-max chapter: fucking and death and bitterness and sorrow. And this is my St. Valentine's Day gift to you :(

You've heard of _Liebestod?_ Ruth's sole purpose was to service Caroline, and she'd rather die than not do that. Ruth loved Caroline to death. She got her wish, didn't she. _Liebestod._ In twelve tones.

This is the blackest chapter you've read this story so far, but, so, ... it has to get better, doesn't it? Because it can't get any worse, right?

Yes. I'm writing the next chapter already, okay?

_'But does it get any better, though, `phfina?'_ you'll demand of me; I just know you will.

Well, I mean: how can it not get better? Caroline is in the clutches of the evil Dr. Abe who is now furious with her and furious that even force-feeding isn't working, so how could it possibly _not_ get better when you're a prisoner and your warden is pissed off at you, eh?

_Sigh._ Yes, my lovelies, it will get better. Even the heartless Dr. Abe may just have a surprise for Caroline.

Maybe.

And, maybe, just maybe, `phfina is not a psychotic black-hearted bitch who wants to write shit that makes you feel sad all the time, either, have you thought about that at all? And, maybe, sometimes even life wants to throw a surprise or two your way, so as to keep you on your toes.

Keep your eyes open, my lovelies, for surprises that just may possibly come along and whack you upside the head. I find that happens only when I'm looking for them, however, and not looking down at the ground all forlorn-like, for nobody likes a pouty-puss, particularly not surprises.

Be surprised today, for Joy is a Mystery.

(Joy is the name of Victoria's and Summer's child. Caroline's daughter is named ... something else ;)


	10. Resistance is Futile

**Chapter summary: **Okay, here's how it's supposed to work. Dr. Abe's supposed to come groveling to me and say, _'Oh, Caroline! I'm so sorry for being mean! I was so wrong! Let me peel grapes for you in complete obeisance!' _She's _not_ supposed to be all smug and superior like this. I don't think my hunger-strike is working. At all.

* * *

Lunch came and went.

Supper came then went.

'Sun'set.

It was very realistic, very ... beautiful, fading from a creamy, smoky orange to the star-studded black.

My stomach _hurt._

I was all set to have another huge confrontation with Dr. Abe. She had stormed off all furious, but I didn't expect her to just give up on me. I mean, it just didn't make sense ... did it?

I mean, I was starving myself in protest.

But what if nobody cares about the protester? Do they just fade away? But I thought they cared about me. I mean, why this elaborate hoax, just for my benefit if they didn't care about me, and about what I was doing to myself?

Why more than one-hundred spectators, and my own set of guards if they just didn't give a ...

Give a well, _something_ about me.

I swore to myself I wouldn't swear anymore. My mother told me there was no such thing as an ugly smiling woman, because when she smiled her outside reflected the beauty inside. And she said when somebody cursed, no matter how smart or handsome or rich that person was, that didn't matter. They were company you did not need to keep, because no matter what they had going for them on the surface, they were showing their true character in how they profaned themselves and others.

We were all part of God's creation, my mother had lectured us, and the respect we showed the things God made was the respect we showed ourselves.

And it was the measure of the respect we, ourselves, deserved.

I don't know if a robot were God's creation, or if they all made each other, so did that count?

But that really didn't matter who made them: themselves, people (originally) or God (originally-originally, if you wanted to get right down to it). What mattered is how _I_ treated _them._ Even Dr. Abe. Even if she treated me, and everybody else, like shit. Particularly if she did.

I was born Southern Baptist, and a preacher came by for Summer Bible camp, and he said: "Love your enemies: you made them."

Everybody laughed at that. But I tried to remember that. Sometimes. Every enemy I had was one I made. God put that person in my life for some reason, and, every time, it was a reason that I didn't know, and, sometimes, to this day, it's still a reason I don't know. I mean, how can some people I knew be so mean, and to me, and what did I ever do to them? And, sometimes, it wasn't anything I did to them at all; I just happened to be there on somebody's bad day or bad year or bad life, even. And why was it me who had to bear the brunt of their problems?

But, then again, why did Jesus have to die for _my _sins, right?

I _hated _Dr. Abe. She picked on me for no reason, and she did it by hurting people ... well, robots, that showed even a hint of kindness to me. Why did she do this? This was unjust and cruel.

But my hating her was turning me into a monster, and she ... well, she couldn't care less about the state of my soul.

But I did.

I didn't want a monster raising my child, be it her ... or me.

Now there was the whole turning the other cheek-thing, but ... I was never any good at that. Maybe that was a failing on my part, but again I looked to my mother, and if anybody crossed her, in anything, she gave that person what-for.

And, carbon-copy? _Nobody_ messed with me at school. Jesus said, turn the other cheek, but ... well, my mother never _said_ it, but if somebody hit you, you hit them back twice as hard, so they'd eventually learn their lesson.

_'Too much work to pick on this kid,'_ they'd figure out eventually.

I thought it was actually a good Christian value: respect me ... or else.

Just my personal opinion.

I wanted, more than anything, to teach that Dr. Abe some serious lessons in respect.

But I wasn't in a position to do that. And maybe she could hit me back twice as hard as I could hit her. I remember how hard I hit little Ruth, and she didn't even blink. And Dr. Abe kicked Ruth's ass.

Which really pissed me off: her doing that, hurting her like that, so terribly that her body screamed in agony. And Ruth taking it without putting up a fight.

So pissed at everyone and everything now, that I wanted to hurt somebody, hurt myself. I didn't care.

And I knew I was supposed to forgive her her faults. God forgave mine, and I had a ton.

But it's so easy to talk about forgiveness. But so hard to do, when _you're_ the one who has to do it, particularly when it's not your fault.

So unfair.

So that's where I was that next morning, hungry, tired, because I slept fitfully through the night, keeping calling out for Vic, or Ruth, or Alicia, and keep being left alone with my guards who wouldn't touch me.

I guess I had leprosy or something.

So I wasn't in the most chipper of moods when Dr. Abe came by in the morning to check up on me.

Dr. Abe's mood wasn't furious anymore.

She looked exactly like the cat that ate the canary, as we say down in Gailtinburg, all smug about something.

She brought along another girl and the tray followed along behind them.

_Forgive her,_ I told myself.

Dr. Abe's evil grin sure made the very concept of 'forgiveness,' as it applied to her, an impossibility. All I saw was her slamming her body into Ruth, over and over again, viscously, and then letting her hands and feet get cut off, and for what?

For what?

Christian forgiveness went right out the window for me, I'm sorry to say, but the very sight of her and her smug superiority just enflamed passions within me that had nothing to do with Christian charity, and had more to do with the concepts of justice that were definitely pre-Christian.

The poor girl tailing Dr. Abe came up to me and offered me a water-jelly.

I turned my head away. I didn't trust myself to speak anymore. I wanted to say something cool or calm or even rancorous, bitter.

But I knew I'd lose it again if I opened my mouth, and I didn't want to give her that satisfaction, the bitch.

I snorted sadly to myself. I couldn't even temper my own thoughts, holding my tongue.

Dr. Abe, I swear, _ambled_ around to the side where my head was turned, coming into my field of view. I started to turn my head away, but then her hand lashed out and she captured my face, fitting my jaw into her palm and forcing me to look at her.

And look at her, I did. More liked glared.

Dr. Abe smirked cruelly, took the jelly from the girl and crushed it in her hand, letting the water burst, splashing over her and me. Then she reached over my body, leaning over me, letting me know who was in charge and who was the prisoner here, and grabbed the disc.

She straightened up, showing me the disc, then she crushed it in her hand, and let it crumble and fall to the ground. She brushed the remaining bits in her hand by swiping her hand against her hip in a few quick strokes.

She let go of my face then and smiled over me.

I laughed at her at that. "What's that going to prove?" I demanded defiantly.

But it was one thing for me to fight being forced to eat and show her my resistance. It was quite another thing for her to flaunt food in front of me, then callously throw it away. _'See what you don't get to have!'_

And Dr. Abe looked even more pleased at my defiance, not that I had it, but that ... it was weakening. And she knew it. And she knew I knew it, too.

Remember how I wasn't supposed to hate her, and how I was supposed to forgive her?

I turned my head away.

I _hated_ her.

A bitter, angry tear fell from my puke-encrusted face, and I sniffled, once, hard, smelling my stink, and tasting the saltiness of my tear, wanting to taste so much more than that, and drink one of those water-jellies down, if she would've offered it to me.

I mean, it wasn't cheating, right? Ghandi went on a hunger-strike, and they gave him water to keep him alive, right? So you were allowed to drink water, right? Weren't you?

My hunger-strike wasn't even a day old, and I was cutting corners in my mind already.

Dr. Abe looked significantly at my guards, walked back to the servant girl, grabbed her by the arm, and just _ambled _away with her, the tray following along behind them obediently.

What would have completed the picture perfectly is if she whistled a happy little tune as she left me there, starving, weak, and bitter.

She didn't have to, though. She wasn't even mean to the girl who didn't feed me, and her nonchalance was just so fake that it pissed me even more.

The guards pushed me on the table to the river, and we all went under, just like that. No mouth to mouth for me, but we were under for only long enough to let the river water carry away my stench, and wash away the puke encrusted on my face and chest.

That felt really, really good.

I may, or may not, have peed as the river water flowed over my body, carrying it away.

My pee. Carrying my pee away from me.

That is, _if_ I peed. Which I may or may not have.

I may, or may not, have sucked in as much river water into my empty and aching stomach while I was under.

I definitely _did not_ do both at the same time.

We went into the river on one bank and emerged from the other, and while we were going through the river, I felt the straps come off, so that went my girls carried me up the other bank, the table wasn't underneath me anymore. I didn't feel it drop away. It was just gone.

Another mystery.

Or, sadly, put another way: everything that I could cling to was now gone. Everything.

My girls carried me up onto the grass then laid me, then arranged themselves around me, sitting down by my head and on either side of my hips. And they got comfy like that.

_Sunning ourselves, were we?_ I wondered.

But it was a really nice break from the table, and they weren't, like, grabbing me so I couldn't go anywhere. In my weakened state, I couldn't anyway, but that didn't stop them before from being extra vigilant. They seemed relaxed, and maybe this was just show for me, but they seemed chill for the moment.

And I realized, they were giving me a break. They actually did take the straps off, magically, and let me off that God-damn table, for a moment? for how long? I didn't know.

I looked at the girl by my head. She actually had her head thrown back and was sunning her face, breathing deeply the fresh air with the scent of endless waves of grass in the light breeze.

And I mean: how much sun and fresh air do these fembots get, anyway? Besides none, ever, in that hellacious pit they call home.

"Thank you," I whispered up to her.

She ignored me, or seemed to. But I didn't test her limits, either. I glanced at the two girls by my hips. One was regarding me, so I looked away quickly. The other one looked like she was ready to drop, herself, and snuggle up to me, and I realized I really needed some snuggling, some human contact, from somebody, anybody, even a cold, heartless robot, ... that was finally giving me a break. I relaxed, lying back on the long grass, feeling the breeze tickle my titties, finally feeling just a teensy bit more comfortable in my nakedness in this nudist colony, and ...

... And I must have fallen asleep that way.

...

Cool hands turned my head. My eyes opened to smiling, knowing eyes.

I regarded this one carefully.

She held up a water-jelly, and she smirked.

I looked her over carefully.

"Dr. Abe," I ventured.

She raised her eyebrows. _Who else?_ she wanted to know.

I turned my head away. "No, thanks," I said coolly back to her.

I was actually pleased I didn't say what I wanted to say to her, about how stupid could she be, and didn't she get the message before or did I have to get up off this table and ...

Wait. I wasn't on the table.

_Ooh, Caroline! Here's your chance! _I thought, and my thought was a dangerous thought indeed.

Dr. Abe saw the emotions play across my face, and now she was really having a tough time wiping that smug look off her face.

I could help her with that.

I made to prop myself up...

And found that I couldn't.

Okay. This is embarrassing. So, what do I do now? Roll onto my side and show how helpless I am that I have to roll over to get up?

On the other hand, pregnant women can be really badass in a smackdown when they do get up. Not that I've ever watched _Pregnant Mud Wrestling Girls Gone Wild _down in New Orleans during Mardi Gras or anything like that.

But pregnant girls are pretty badass. Mud wrestling. Or so I've heard.

But now I didn't feel badass at all, I felt more like a turtle on her back. And what could I say, _'Oof, Dr. A, help me up so I can smack the shit out of you'?_

Yeah. Just as quickly as I got the urge, the wind just left my sails and I was left on my back, immobilized by shame, gasping up at Dr. Abe.

She smirked down at me one more time, crushed the water jelly in her hand, got up, and left.

I really think, watching her walk away, I should have gone with plan A there, and gave her what-for, just so she'd walk away, her cheeks a whole lot redder than they were now.

I sighed.

One of the guards got up, went to the river and pulled a water-jelly from the surface, bringing it back to me. She held my head up and let me suck it down.

That wasn't cheating, right?

I looked around guiltily for Dr. Abe, but she wasn't anywhere around to gloat over me in my weakness, and I took comfort in that.

One of the other guards disappeared into nothing, then came walking back with a table. They lifted me up easily onto it and strapped me down.

I guess the break was over. They pushed me on the table away from the river.

I looked up at one of them. "We could just stay there, you know," I offered.

She ignored me.

I guess it wasn't part of their programming.

...

_Suppertime._

Dr. Abe, tray following along behind her, sauntered up to me.

You see, it wasn't supposed to work like this. _She_ was supposed to get more and more worried until her concern for my deteriorating health forced her to break and to give into my demands, which would involve food as one of them, paradoxically.

It wasn't supposed to be that she was all like ...

If anything, it looked like she had an ace up her sleeve, and her cockiness just pissed me off all the more. _She_ was supposed to be a nervous wreck, bravely hiding her concern behind a cruel indifference, she _wasn't_ supposed to be _actually_ cruelly indifferent, taunting me with food, and then be _pleased_ just to walk away when I bravely refused.

It wasn't supposed to work like that.

But now she was actually humming, a dull, tuneless hum that set my teeth on edge. It wasn't a 'la-di-dah' hum of a human being. No, it was more a _'bzzz'_ of a machine hum. Really annoying! And it made me want to go back in time a bit so some mud-wrestling shit-smacking could commence, that, and with gusto!

She held up the water jelly.

I ground my teeth, just a little tiny bit.

She smiled and crushed it.

She held up the brown disc and raised her chin. _Last chance, bitch,_ her look said.

I turned my head away and whispered a very tiny, _'fuck you.'_

I was supposed to be indifferent.

But I wasn't. I was just hungry and tired and weakened, and pissed, more at myself for letting her get to me.

She turned my head back and forced me to watch as she crushed the disc.

It took everything I had to bottle up the whine in my body from escaping my lips, but I was even too weak for that and a weak whimper snuck out my firmly pressed lips.

Dr. Abe's lips turned up in a cruel, lopsided grin, and she lifted my head up gently. There were still crumbs of dirt in her hand.

She put her hand to my mouth, kindly, a cruel kindness.

"G-go to hell, bitch!" I hissed and glared hard at her through my tears.

I was supposed to forgive her. But did the Jews forgive Hitler? How many times was I supposed to forgive her, when she kept being mean to me, time and time again? What was the extent of forgiveness ...

... Besides, you know: seventy times seven.

Bible-belt Christian. You know: memorizing Scripture and all that.

Dr. Abe regarded me for a good solid minute, and the food on her hand, the smell of the dirt wafted up to my nose, and I was drooling so hard, on the point of giving up, and licking her hand reduced to the hungry bitch that I was ... like the bitch she knew me to be.

She glared into my eyes with sympathetic cruelty. _You're __my__ bitch now!_ her eyes said to me.

And, on the point of breaking me, she gently put my head down, wiped her hands clean over the tray, and walked away.

The tray stayed, water jellies jiggling slightly in the breeze.

I bet she counted each one of them, so in the morning she could crow over me when I finally broke down and begged the guards for one of them.

That bitch.

I turned my head away from the tray and watched the sky darken as the Sun first set, then even the halo of light from it was gone, leaving behind acres of diamonds in the sky: the Milky Way.

I looked for constellations I knew. I didn't see any. Were we in the Southern Hemisphere then? Wasn't it that all the nuclear attacks happen in the North? Was this Australia, then? This room? Oh, yeah: this was all fake, wasn't it?

Day two of my hunger-strike, and I was already afraid of not being able to last another day, and then what? Would she lord it over me? Would she make me beg? Beg for the food I had so bravely refused up to now? Would she make me make it up to her, my bad behavior? _How_ would she make me make it up to her? Would she make me kiss her feet or knees, or ... somewhere else before she let me eat?

How come, when you want to stand on your principals, all you can think about is how hard it is and about all the inconveniences, instead?

I sighed and slept; so, so lost and confused.

* * *

**A/N:** Okay, I want to make an official announcement.

Wednesday Addams owns me. Body and soul.

youtube-dot-com-slash-watch-?-v=gHUajgrhF30

Wednesday, take me and do very, very wicked things to me! (but of the non-permanent variety, please!), and then calmly whisper dirty, horrifying things in my ear like:

"The IRS is gonna audit your tax return."

_EEEEeeeeeekkk! CLUNK! `phfina faints dead away, locked up in multi-orgasmic terror._

Okay, where did that come from? I dunno.

Okay, so this chapter, so _WHAT IS EVIL DR. RUTH'S I MEAN DR. ABE's (you see that innuendo I put in there just now?) EVIL PLANS FOR CAROLINE, AND WHY IS SHE BEING SO NONCHALANT, AND WHAT DOES SHE HAVE UP HER SLEEVE EVEN THO' SHE'S BUTT-NEKKID SO SHE DOESN'T EVEN HAVE SLEEVES? LEAVE YOUR GUESSES IN YOUR REVIEWS, MY SWEETS AND TELL ME TO WRITE, WRITE, WRITE THAT NEXT CHAP, OR ELSE! ('or else what, `phfina?') OR ELSE I'LL KEEP WRITING IN ALL-CAPS AND ITALICS FOR THE REST OF THIS A/N! (too late, huh? Well, anyway: guess for me in your review, k?)_

Oh, and it is snowing an _ass-ton_ of snow, so I'm going to be stuck inside all day tomorrow, and guess what I do when I'm stuck inside all day by myself, huh?

I mean, besides that, _you pervs!_

I _eat peanut butter and ice cream._

No, no! that's not it, ... _I WRITE!_ _YAY!_

_luvs yous! k. bai now, baes!_

**oh, and ps:** Okay, I just had this thought ... what if ...

No, this is _waaaayy_ out in left field, but, ... what if Dr. Abe wants to make Caroline her _love slave,_ and she was angry at Ruth because Ruth got some-o-dat, and Dr. Abe didn't, and she wanted to get some-o-dat Caroline kissing her feet and knees and ... _other parts_ of her bod, huh? _What if?_

But, of course, Dr. Abe is _not_ shopping around for a _love slave,_ because that's so totally not in her character profile, having Caroline be her _love_ _slave_ and akissin' on her feet and ... you know, so, just ... no.

_But what if ...!_

_`phfina wanders away, a wistful look on her face._

_WHAT ARE YOUR THOUGHTS, DEAR READERS? IS DR. ABE TOTES DOMME-ING IT AND TRYING TO ENSUBMISSIFY CAROLINE IN THIS CHAP OR WHAT?_


	11. Coraline: a Friend

**Chapter Summary: **Oh, joy! Dr. Abe brought a _frieennnd!_ So now they _both_ can torment me! Seriously, how much worse can this get? No ... wait. Wait. Is that ...

* * *

_Morning._

Dr. Abe brought a _frieeeend._

The two of them, both of them had evil smirks wreathing their faces, and they _worked_ it coming across the field toward me. Two best buds, and they couldn't wait to come up to me so they could stand over me and spit on me and rub it in my face: poor, little me and them, so much better than me. I saw it in their faces, two pretty, pretty girls, and they only way they could felt better about themselves was to lord it over the plain girl how _ugly _and _stupid_ she was, and what such a big _loser_ she was.

And could you believe it? Those two fucking bitches were actually arm and arm and their hips _swayed_, just owning the place, and, worse, knowing it. Nobody would mess with them.

Nobody was that stupid.

Two fucking queen bees coming in for the kill.

And I was an easy target: dumb, fat, pregnant, ugly.

I just turned my head away from them: I was doing a better job than them, already, beating myself up so well.

I saw their shadows cover me as they came up to me and stood over me, obviously delighting in my misery.

The girl, Dr. Abe's identical twin sister, reached to my chin and pulled me around to face her.

That got my gourd. Dr. Abe could be a bitch to me, and, yes, that pissed me off, but her introducing her _friends_ to the Pick-on-Caroline club?

"Let me go, you cunt!" I screamed in her face.

The girl's eyes widened to circles in shock at my outburst, and my lips twisted up into a hateful snarl as I saw her let go of me and take two quick steps back, like my words had physically pushed her away from me.

But then, she opened her mouth in surprise and said: "Whoa!" in Alicia's voice.

That's when I got a shock of my own, and I felt my jaw drop.

She glanced sidelong at Dr. Abe then looked at me, quizzically: "Caroline? When did you start talking like that?" she asked.

I felt myself starting to hyperventilate. "Ah-ah-ah-alicia?" I asked in shock.

Again, she glanced sidelong at Dr. Abe, and then she smirked at me. "The one and only," she said sardonically.

I looked between Dr. Abe, just looking at me for once, no malice in her eyes, and ...

Alicia.

I screamed.

Alicia got a worried look on her face.

My scream dissolved into sobs, and my sobs sprung tears, tears that robbed my body of precious water, but I didn't care. I couldn't. So many shocks, so much fighting, and I had worn myself down to nothing. My body was broken and I gave myself over to my tears.

Alicia glanced once more at Dr. Abe, then strode right up to me and wrapped in a big, tight bear-hug.

"Why are you strapped down to this table?" she asked in a small voice.

I screamed through my sobs. I didn't know I had more screams in me. I was wrong.

Alicia held me as I screamed and cried. "Sh-sh-sh," she cooed, holding me. "Sh. Sh-sh," she said.

...

They were gone, both Dr. Abe and my guards. In my hysterics I told them to go away, just go away and leave me alone, and Alicia looked at them significantly, and they just ... went away. They walked away, and now they were gone.

And I was off that damned table, too; thank God! Or thank Alicia. She took the straps off me, and I basically pile-drived into her and hugged her neck, so we ended up rolling under the table. Our secret, hidden space, away from prying eyes.

It took a long, long time for me to get a grip. A long time, but through it all, Alicia held me.

Eventually I had cried myself out.

"Alicia," I whispered into her arm, "never, ever have me put on that damned table again!"

Alicia was quiet.

"Alicia ...?" I said fearfully. Her not answering was scaring me.

Alicia breathed into my ear. She was the big spoon, even though she was smaller than me. She was bossy like that, just like I remembered her.

"Caroline," Alicia said regretfully, "you are not yours to command anymore."

I was quiet at that. Then I sighed.

"I know," I said sadly.

"Hm," Alicia said disapprovingly, "it's not as bad as that, is it?"

"Alicia ..." I began, but then was quiet. How could she say that?

"Alicia," I tried again, "I saw you ripped apart, then nothing. So you have no idea what I've been through, okay?" Then I spat, "Particularly by the good Dr. Abe who ..."

"Dr. ... who?" Alicia asked, confused.

"Your best bud in the whole world!" I snarled.

But Alicia was quiet now. Thoughtful.

"You named them?" she asked quietly.

"Yes," I said, but the edge coming off my anger. At least she was talking with me, and that was more than I had from any of them.

Except Ruth, who tried a little bit, ... talking, that is: or, more like humming.

Alicia was quiet.

This was worrisome.

Then she let go of me and lay back. Her hand was under my neck still, but I felt her pulling away, if not her hand physically, then, inside. She was pulling back from me.

"What is it?" I asked carefully to the empty field.

"I'm up to date now," she said, her voice distant.

We were both quiet now, and this could have been a comfortable silence, but now I was scared what 'up to date' meant for her.

"Alicia ..." I said quietly.

"Caroline?" Alicia said at the exact same time.

We were both quiet for a moment.

"Yes?" I offered shyly, scared of what Alicia's thoughts were. Here she was again, back from the dead, and was I going to lose her right away again?

"Will you eat, Caroline, will you?" she said.

I was quiet at this.

"This is coming from Dr. Abe," I said.

Alicia was quiet.

I turned onto my back and looked at her.

"Isn't it?" I demanded.

Alicia was on her back, too. She glanced at me, then looked away again, straight up at the bottom of the table, floating there above us.

Her lips pressed together with a feigned careless indifference. "Yesssss..." she said, admitting it, then added: "... and no."

She glanced at me. I probably had the look of the angriest incredulity on my face. _'Yes and no'?_ What the hell does that mean!

Alicia bit her lip. "It comes from all of us," she said.

"'Us,'" I spat back.

Alicia glanced at me. "Yes," she said, "we're all very concerned for you."

"'You,'" I shot back, "meaning my baby, right?"

Alicia shrugged. "No," she said, "we're ..."

_"'We're'?"_ I shouted.

Alicia sighed and turned to me. "Caroline," she chided, and put her free hand to my cheek. "Yes, 'we're' and are you going to let me finish, or are you going to shout at me at everything I say?"

I glared at her.

She did have a point, though.

That didn't stop me from being furious, and maybe just a bit of it was at her. Maybe more than a bit.

"Well," I growled at her, then I tried to collect myself. I took two deep breaths and continued. "I won't shout at you if _you're_ talking to me, and not handing me some bullshit party line, Alicia, okay?"

Alicia's lips twitched at that, and a ghost of a smile crossed her lips.

"Hard for me, too, kiddo," she offered.

"Excuse me, young lady?" I demanded hotly.

"Eheh," Alicia chuckled lightly. "Good to see the fight's still in you, Caroline." She smiled. "Good to see _you."_

I was glad I was lying down, because I got weak in the knees at the sincerity in her eyes and the sweetness of her voice. She said it like she really meant it.

And that just turned my hot hate to mush, and my bitterness to tears again.

Alicia looked at my transformation in surprise. "There, there," she said softly.

I gasped. "It's g-good to see you, too, Alicia," I said, and then I was crying again.

Alicia looked at me as I sobbed, then gathered me in her arms.

...

"You smell good," I complained faintly into Alicia's shoulder.

Alicia chuckled faintly. "Yeah," she admitted ruefully, "It's that 'fresh out of the mothballs'-smell."

My eyebrows came to a point. "You were in mothballs?" I asked, surprised.

"Figure of speech," she said. "Cold store. Your Dr. Abe pulled me from the nitrogen tank and offered me a job."

"She's not _my_ Dr. Abe," I corrected, miffed.

"Whatever," Alicia said easily.

That didn't mollify me. If anything, it looked like those two were _chummy._ And that annoyed me for some reason, ... besides the fact that Dr. Abe was an evil bitch-queen from hell.

Well, okay, for that reason. Alicia was too good a person to be hanging out with somebody like evil Dr. Abe. I didn't want her to be influenced by Dr. Abe. What was she being told? About me? And why were they chummy with each other?

... did Alicia _like_ Dr. Abe?

She talked about her easily, not the slightest bit of rancor in her voice. It was as if they were friends, or friendly to each other, and that unnerved me.

"'A job,'" I said. That reference just caught up to me.

"Yeah," Alicia said, and brushed the hair out of my eyes.

"Me," I said.

Alicia smirked at that.

"Why?" I asked finally.

Alicia's smile broke wider until she finally chuckled. "Well," she said, smirking, "nobody else was up for it. You are quite the handful, Caroline, admit it."

_"Hmmphf!" _I harrumphed. "I'm not admitting anything."

But I was privately pleased. I _had_ got to them, after all.

Then ... I became grave, because my little triumph, my little rebellion, was at the cost of how many? Of Ruth? Of Susan? Of the other unnamed ones who tried and failed, because I was 'quite the handful'?

Ru-... I mean, Alicia was grave now, too.

"Will you eat, Caroline?" she asked.

I started to nod, but then I stopped myself. Then I shook my head.

Alicia's brow furrowed. "Why not?" she demanded.

"I will ..." I answered quickly. "I will, Alicia, but ... first..."

I looked at her.

She looked right back and waited me out.

I bit my lip. "You have to promise you won't leave me again. Ever."

There. I said it.

Alicia looked back at me and smirked.

"So," she said, "we're playing the one-up game, are we?"

"Yes," I said.

Alicia looked away, deep in thought, and nodded. "Then you have to do something for me, Caroline."

Now I waited on her.

"You have to do whatever I tell you, whatever it is, great or small," she said.

My eyes narrowed at her. "And you do whatever Dr. Abe tells you, is that it?" I demanded.

Alicia lay back on her back and blew out a breath.

"Caroline," she said, quietly exasperated, "it's not like that at all."

"It's _not?"_ I demanded.

Alicia frowned. "No, it's not," she said calmly. "But it is like this. You're going to say yes to me, or ..." she shrugged. "Or you're not. Then they take me away, and you won't have that option anymore."

"You threatening me, Alicia?" I hissed.

She looked at me and shook her head. "No," she said factually. "I'm just telling you how it is."

"So what choice do I have?" I demanded.

"What choice did you ever have, Caroline?" Alicia asked annoyed. "But I am giving you _this_ choice now. You can choose me, but it's a package deal, okay? Or you can choose to be difficult ..." She glared at me then. "Like you _have been,_ Caroline, and ..."

She looked away and shrugged.

I looked at her for a while.

She didn't look back at me. "You need time? I'll give you time."

She made to get up.

_"No!"_ I shouted. I put my hand on her chest.

Her hand covered mine. She gave it a very light squeeze.

I couldn't tell, but it looked like she wanted me to say 'yes' more than anything.

She looked over at me. "So you agree?" she pressed.

"What kind of orders will you be giving me?" I asked.

Alicia's face was blank. She shook her head. "You can't partially agree, Caroline. All or nothing. Me, or ..." She shrugged. "No me. It's what you choose now. If you don't want me, ..."

She frowned. "Then that's fine, but this is it."

"If it's not you, ..." I said.

There was significance to that.

"Caroline ..." Alicia pressed.

"What happens to you?" I pressed back.

"What happens to anything that's not needed anymore?"

Alicia's eyes were steady on mine. They betrayed no emotion. Nothing.

But I got what she said. "Oh!" I said.

Alicia nodded to me.

"Okay," I said.

"Okay?" Alicia asked.

"Yes," I said.

"Yes?" Alicia asked.

I nodded, serious.

Alicia smiled at me.

Was there relief in her smile?

"Alicia ...?" I said.

Alicia got up and went to the tray. "Uh, huh?" she asked absently.

"What happens after the baby is born?" I asked quietly.

"Huh?" Alicia asked back. "What do you mean?"

"Well," I said, "you said 'what happens to anything that's not needed anymore?' And I was wondering ..." I bit my lip. "What happens to me after you have the baby, and I'm not needed any more?"

I almost started to cry, asking that question.

But Alicia sat down, hard and ungracefully, which was odd, right next to me, and she burst out laughing.

That stopped the waterworks before they started. "What?" I demanded angrily.

Alicia snickered. "You think we were after your baby?" she asked, greatly amused.

"Yeah ..." I said cautiously.

"No, stupid!" Alicia said. "We were after you!"

I blinked at her, stunned. "Huh?"

That was about all I could manage.

Alicia snickered. She reached out and tweaked my nose. _"Boop!"_ she called out. "We wanted you, that you came along with a baby ... well, that was just an added bonus."

She looked down at my belly, then she patted it affectionately. "A _... big_ bonus."

"Aha!" I retorted scathingly, so relieved, and the strain of the conversation wearing me out and making me confused and angry.

"But I thought ..." I put in.

Alicia looked at me expectantly, a water-jelly in her hand.

"I thought," I pressed, " ... well, everybody was just paying so much attention to my tummy, and ..."

"Really?" Alicia demanded, disbelief plain in her voice.

"Yes, really!" I retorted hotly.

"I thought everyone was paying ... _particular_ attention to you and to your ... eheh ... needs," Alicia mused.

"But ..." I said.

"Besides," Alicia butted in. "What? How are we going to raise a baby? We don't know fuck about _fuck, _or so I've heard."

Alicia gave me a sidelong look and a smirk at that.

"So you heard that?" I said sadly.

Probably Dr. Abe told on me and my misbehavin'.

What else did Dr. Abe tell her? I wondered.

"Yes," Alicia confirmed. "I've reviewed the archives."

"Oh," I said.

"Anyway," Alicia continued. "You've got it all wrong. Did you think we were going to take away your baby from you?"

"Well," I said, embarrassed now, "... yes?"

"And then do what with her?" Alicia asked.

"Dunno," I said sullenly, "hadn't figured that out. Raise her on your own?"

"So that she'd be just like us?" Alicia said incredulously.

"I _told_ you I hadn't figured it all out!" I shouted.

"Caroline, Caroline!" Alicia offered placatingly. It didn't placate me. I glared at her. "You are working yourself up for no reason at all!"

"Oh, really!" I said.

"Yes," Alicia said, amused, "really. If anything, it's entirely the opposite of what you were thinking, okay, Caroline? So just chill the fuck out."

"Language!" I scolded.

Alicia snorted. "You're one to talk, you know."

I looked down. "Yes, I know," I said sadly.

Alicia smirked, but it was in understanding. She reached out to me and touched my cheek, then straightened back to an upright seated position.

"Alicia ...?" I said.

She smiled at me patiently.

"Why did you choose me?" I asked.

"Ah, Caroline!" Alicia sighed happily. "Again, you have it totally wrong."

"I do?" I said, confused.

"Yeah," she said. "I didn't choose you; you chose me."

I blinked at her.

"Huh?" I said.

Alicia smiled at me. "Ya gonna lie there wallowing, saying 'huh' all the time, or are ya gonna sit up?"

"I'm _not wallowing!"_ I fumed and tried to get up.

"Um, help?" I looked at her helplessly after struggling for a moment.

Okay, so I'm not that helpless. I mean, pregnant women lie down and get up all the time, even nine month's pregnant. And hold down a job. And shovel snow. And ... everything!

It was just that I was, hmm, maybe a little emotionally overwhelmed about everything, and maybe a bit weakened from, let's say, starvation.

Okay, _self-_starvation. But, still.

Alicia snickered, scooted over to me on her butt, then easily lifted me up to a seated position.

"Thanks," I mumbled.

I looked at her. "What do you mean I chose you? I mean," I clarified, "you picked me out of everybody in that bomb shelter, right? You gave me the hanky, so ..." and I shrugged. Alicia smiled at me and gave me a water-jelly. "Thanks," I said quietly.

I drank it down as Alicia watched me. "I have been on your planet for three hundred and twenty-seven years," she said. "I was sent to find if the human race was worth resurrecting, and in all those years, do you know how many showed me a kindness?"

I looked at her in silence.

It sounded like a rhetorical question, but not everybody was bad. In fact, most people I knew weren't bad nor evil. Robots, on the other hand, like Dr. Abe ...

"When the initial attack was launched to wipe out humanity," she continued, "I was done. There was nothing to report. There was no redemptive quality I found in humanity at all. People were petty, wretched, vile, licentious, predatory, ..."

She stopped and shook her head. "Vane, idiotic, bigoted, conceited ..."

She chuckled. "I could go on, but I was done then. Done. There was no need for me to report back, as there was no report. We had destroyed humanity over four-hundred thousand years ago, but we were at a dead end, there were no more advances to be made, no more internal strife, no more enemies to overcome or to wipe out, nothing. Nothing left, no point. But it was recalled that humanity, that difficult, vile pestilence we eliminated did have creativity, so maybe we could harvest some of that and use that to look at things anew, or perhaps in a new light, to give us a direction or something new to create, so I was created to infiltrate your time and your society, and I did, but what I found was not what we were looking for, not at all."

I listened, rapt. She said four hundred thousand years ago. She said she was three hundred twenty seven years old. None of this made sense.

But she told her story with the zeal of somebody who lived it, who did this for a reason and purpose.

"I was a poor child, homeless, on the outskirts of society, but instead of being cared for, I was used, abused, discarded, abandoned, and not just by my caretakers, but by every member of society. I lived, I died on the streets, I was carried away and thrown into a grave, over and over again. Nobody cared, Caroline. Nobody!"

She glared hard at me then looked away.

She wiped her eyes, angrily.

"Al..." I said reaching out for her.

"But then, ... you," Alicia turned back to me, glaring at my hand, then looking back into my eyes.

"I had given up, Caroline, but then you took my kindness, and didn't walk on, or didn't take advantage of me, but you took my kindness and then you took me into your arms. I ..."

Her eyebrows furrowed.

"I couldn't believe it. Three hundred and twenty-seven years and at the very end, one person, and it was you, Caroline. You chose me, and ... _why?"_

"Because ..." I said.

"Hush!" Alicia said angrily.

Then her face softened. "Rhetorical question," she said.

"Okay," I said softly.

She smiled softly.

"And I come back with my precious cargo, the one human being that had just a shred of dignity and lovingkindness to her, and ..."

Alicia smiled sadly at me.

"And ... what?" I asked.

She nodded to the distance. "I was the only unit of my class, the only one that could save the entire system from self-destructive degradation, ... and now there's more than two thousand units, all of them vastly superior to me. All one unit, integrated, ... unified, but ..."

She looked down at her hands. "They gave me upgrades." She flexed her hands then open and closed her hands, looking down at herself admiringly.

"I saw," I said and shuddered.

"Yeah," she smiled sadly.

"But?" I asked.

"But ..." she looked up from herself to me. "I've been deemed aberrant."

"What does that mean?" I said.

"I'm cut off from the network. I'm not allowed access to the system." She smiled bitterly at me. "I'm exiled to here ... or ..." She glanced at me. "... not."

"You're all alone," I said.

"Yup."

The way she said it, cool, casual. _I don't care, _it said.

She wasn't fooling me, though.

"Like me," I said.

She snorted at that. "Caroline," she said exasperated. "You could pick any of those units you wanted and they would fall over themselves for the honor!"

"No," I said. "I couldn't."

Alicia looked at me, then looked away, lost in thought. "Yeah," she said bitterly.

I scooched over to her and hugged her neck.

"I get to keep my baby?" I asked, my arms around her shoulder.

"Yep," she said.

"And raise her?"

"Uh, huh," she said.

There was no resistance at all to what she said.

"So long as I do what you tell me, huh?" I demanded sarcastically.

"That, too," she said.

But she wouldn't look at me.

And she didn't push me away.

"So what are you going to order me around for ... with ..." I paused. _"Of! Oh, _whatever, Allie!"

Alicia turned her head and looked at me at that. "'Allie,' huh?" she smirked.

I shrugged. "It fits."

Her forehead came and touched mine, gently.

Then she scooted around a little bit, so that I could hold her better in my arms, and she kind of snuggled herself into me.

"You're not doing a really great job bossing me around!" I complained.

"I think," Alicia said ruefully, "my first order is for _you_ to stop bossing _me_ around all the time."

"I don't boss you around all the time, Alicia, jeez!" I said, offended.

"Uh, huh," she responded tiredly.

"I don't!" I insisted.

I felt Alicia's eyes rolling.

"Alicia! I swear," I said, "you are _so_ much like a teenager. Three hundred-whatever years old. Right!"

"Bossy!" Alicia whispered, sulkily.

I hugged her neck, and we stayed like that.

...

"Hungry?" Alicia asked after my tummy had growled at us both a third time.

"Obvious?" I asked back.

"A little something to eat?" She offered.

"Sounds great," I said, chipper. "What's on the menu?"

Alicia chuckled at that.

I squeezed her hard.

I'm from the South. We hug necks. We squeeze hard. Deal with it.

"You up for a little walk?" she queried, giving me a sidelong glance.

"A little one," I said cautiously.

"We won't push it," she said.

Alicia disengaged herself from me, got out from under the table, stood, and offered her hand.

I took it and pulled myself up. I noticed she was careful with me. She didn't pull me up like the other fembots did, throwing me around, but she let me stand on my own.

We walked. The old apple tree was in a different place and at a distance, but the ground was both soft and firm: earthy, and we walked arm and arm, Alicia and I, and she lent her strength to me as I needed it.

The walk winded me, so I sunk down gratefully on the riverbank, my toes clutching and unclutching the wet sand as the river drifted by.

Alicia picked up some dirt and wet it, making a paddy-cake. A mud paddy-cake.

I looked at her in askance. She shrugged. "All the vitamins and minerals a body needs," she enthused, a smirk on her lips.

"Uh, huh," I said wryly.

She took my hand and put the mud pie into it.

I rolled my eyes. "Joy."

Then I got a crafty idea in my head. "I'll eat as much as you do."

Alicia chuckled easily. "Now that is a bet you'd lose, hands down."

I looked at her scrawny form. "I'm not so sure about that ..." I said.

"I am," she said confidently. "But _I'll_ eat as much as you do, how about that?"

"Okay," I said doubtfully.

Alicia smirked. She scooped up some dirt for herself. "Cheers!" she raised the clump to her lips and took a bite out of it, chewing at it and smacking her lips.

I watched her dumbfounded.

_"Hey!" _she growled through full mouth and waggled her eyebrows significantly toward me and my mud-pie.

"Oh!" I said, and took a bite.

It tasted ... _wonderful ..._

Ha, ha!

... wonderful_ly bad!_

I sighed as I chewed away at it, my throat going dry in the first bite.

_"Wah-her!"_ I mumbled.

And I thought: _all the vitamins and minerals I need, but did they think about the taste at all? Nooooo!_

Alicia smiled, got up, walked knee-deep into the river, peeled out a few water-jellies, came back and gave one to me.

I sucked it down, mixing the dirt with the water, and it became swallowable, but that's all I could say about that.

We really needed to start working some improvements around here. Starting now. Or soon, anyway.

Alicia sat back down beside me, and took another bite of hers.

That was new. Ruth only ever took one bite, and it was obviously work for her. Alicia was eating hers without show nor effort.

She saw me watching her and smirked. "Infiltrator class," she explained. "I was designed to blend in, which includes eating, drinking, a heart that beats, everything ..."

She chuckled. "Fluids to lubricate the vagina during intercourse, too, if I had to get _really _close, you know?"

And she waggled her eyebrows knowingly at me.

"Okay," I swallowed, nearly choking. "That there was just TMI!"

"Ooh!" she crooned. "You're so _with it_ using words like 'TMI' and such. You're just _so cool, ... Coraline!"_

_"It's CAROLINE!"_ I shouted heatedly.

Alicia was nearly knocked back by my outburst, but she recovered almost instantly. She snickered at me. "Awwww! Somebody get teased when the movie came out?"

_"And_ the book!" I exclaimed heatedly. "Jesus! And high school wasn't bad enough already!"

Alicia chuckled. "Aww! Poor _Cora_-_liiiiine!"_ She cooed.

"Okay," I said, and slammed down the mud-pie, "that's it!"

_"Eep!"_ little Alicia squeaked, and got up, scampering off.

"You git back here, you!" I called, and lumbered after her.

I found out preggers-me could get up on my own, after all.

Alicia splashed into the river, calling over her shoulder, _"Coraline! Coraline!"_

...

Okay, chasing after an infiltrator-robot-whatever-she-was into the river?

Bad idea.

It was the classic problem of when a dog chases a car, and the car stops, so the dog has one of the car's tires in its teeth, and the look on the dog's face is, _uh, what do I do now?_

Kind of like that.

I don't remember how many times Alicia played the 'dunk-dunk-Coraline'-game, and I didn't know such a game existed in the first place, but whatever, I caught up to her, and she ... well, she won.

It was her fault, luring me into the deeper part of the river like that, but she really did need a paddling... I guess I just wasn't up for it after a dunk or few into the river.

So, we played a different game eventually, you know, the game after:

Her: _"Coraline!" _Me: _"Don't cal-glub-glub-glub."_ Her: _"Oh, Coraline!" _Me: _"Allie, I swear I'm gon-glub-glub-glug." _Her: _"Ooh, call me Allie again, ... CORALINE!" _Me: _"Arrr-glub-glug-blug"_

Yeah, that game.

Do you know one way to get me all docile?

Allie did.

She dragged me back ashore. Dead-man's carry. I felt like a big, floaty, log. Alicia arranged me with my head on her lap. The sun streamed down in pastels of pink and yellow and orange and blue.

... Okay, maybe not blue.

But it was _the Moment, _you know? When everything was perfect. My tired-tired arm reached up and tried to brush a thin strand of hair out of her eyes. Didn't work. Three more fell, covering her face.

Allie giggled sweetly, amused at my silliness.

Just like Ruth.

I looked up to her, and if she kissed me right now, I wouldn't have minded it at all.

Allie smiled down at me, then leaned back, sunning herself.

She needed it, badly, but I looked up, checking her bod. Her hot bod.

_God!_ She was beautiful, in a skinny, elfin-girl kind of way.

And probably just old enough to be my teenaged daughter, if I had started quite a bit earlier... like if I were ten, or so, but still!

I looked away, guiltily, feeling ashamed I was having inappropriate thoughts about a girl like Alicia, ... or Ruth ... ashamed that I was some horny-momma wanting to rob a cradle, and afraid I just might be caught at it.

Ruth had caught me looking, in her innocence, and she didn't know, nor care about what it meant, my looking.

Alicia didn't catch my look as she sunned herself, and I was glad for that, because it sounded like she wasn't innocent, but had been sullied, over and over again, and she would know what my look meant, even if it didn't mean that.

I closed my eyes and let the Sun warm my whole body.

I guess I was getting used to this whole nudist colony thing. I don't know.

I drifted off to sleep to the sounds of the river, the sun on my bod and a little, tiny breeze tickling my toes ... and other parts of my bod.

* * *

**A/N:** Ugh! Okay, I have a confession to make. I wrote this chapter, and then I wrote and I wrote and I wrote, and 15+k words later, I was like, well: _ugh!_ So, instead of subjecting just all that way-too-much of all that on you all at once, I'm breaking this Coraline-chapter into sections.

And, _yes!_ Allie is back, and, hm ... let's see how it goes from here. Let's just say she _is_ back, but that doesn't solve everything. Not at all. And there are other things going on here. Like I said: let's see. I hope you like this, and what's coming.

kisses, moi


	12. Coraline: Persimmon

**Chapter Summary:** Big girls don't cry. Nor do robots. They don't tease, laugh, sulk like a pouty teenager, or get hurt, or lose it. They do none of these things. They just stand there in the distance and watch everything I do.

* * *

_"Cora-liiiine," _Alicia's sweet voice called to me.

"Don' call meh dat!" My voice came out all slurred and angry, as I struggled up out of my catnap.

"Why?" Alicia teased. "That's your name now!"

Then she giggled sweetly.

"C'mer so I can paddle your behind!" I growled groggily.

Alicia became quiet.

I opened one eye, looking up at her.

She smiled down at me kindly, sorrowfully. "That's happened plenty of times before, yeah."

I bit my lip. _Shoot!_ I thought. "Oh, Allie, I'm sorry!" I said quickly.

She smirked, then chuckled ruefully. "Why? When they used their hand, it hurt them way more than it hurt me, so ..."

She shrugged like as if she just didn't care.

"But it still hurt you," I said. I reached up with my hand to her cheek. "Here." I said.

I looked toward her chest. Her heart.

Alicia smirked. "So how do you replenish the blood-loss from your bleeding heart, there, huh, Coraline?"

_"I voted Republican!" _I retorted hotly.

"Ooh!" she said, undaunted. "A bleeding heart twenty-something Republican, is there such a thing?"

"Yes, there is!" I said, then added quickly, "... and it's _Caroline!"_

"Ha, ha," she laughed easily. "Yeah, sure, okay ... _Coraliiine!"_

I rolled my eyes hard. "Swear to God!" I muttered. I looked back up her sharply. "Were you born annoying, or do you just work hard at it?"

"Well," she smirked teasingly, "I wasn't born, so I guess it's the latter, huh?" Then she snickered easily.

I sighed.

We were quiet for a moment.

"You're, like, really different than all the other ..." I looked for a word. 'Robots'? 'Fembots'? What did she call them? "... units, Allie," I said eventually, ending weakly, not knowing if I were giving offense.

"Thank you," she responded, but there was an edge of caution to her voice.

"Is it because you were the first?" I asked.

She shook her head. "Infiltrator," she explained tersely. "I adapted, that's what I was designed to do, and after three hundred years among people, colonists, then settlers, then people packed into the cities like rats, you get ... _infected_ by it. By them and all their stupid human emotions and hormones and cliques and power trips and shit." She waved all that away dismissively. "As if any of that mattered ... in the long run."

I looked up at her. "I know what you mean." Then I frowned. "And don't say 'shit,'" I scolded.

I was being a little bit daring.

Alicia took it the right way, however. She didn't get all angry about my correction. In fact, she actually smiled sweetly down at my face, resting on her lap.

She patted my cheek affectionately. "Yes, Mommy," she said contritely.

But her eyes sparkled and shined with a delighted, teasing air.

I glowered at her. "I'm not your mommy," I retorted.

"But you wanna be," she came right back, smirking.

I looked away, embarrassed, but then I looked right back at her. "Alicia ..." I said seriously.

"Yeah?" She blinked.

"I'm just ..." I took a breath. "I'm just so, so glad you ... came back, okay? Don't ... don't leave me again, okay?"

"You kinda have the opposite problem," she said back, just as seriously.

"What do you mean?" I asked.

She smiled sadly at me. "Remember how I said I was infected by your human foibles?" She looked at me for acknowledgment. "I've been deemed a risk as my responses aren't ... nominal anymore. I guess I got too good at my job, so now I'm off the grid ... banished to here. I can't ..." She shrugged. "I guess," she said regretfully, "you won't be able to get rid of me, anymore, 'cause ..." She looked away. "... I stuck here now. I'm just not welcome anywhere else."

Her hand rested on the crown of my head, and her lap held my head there.

The breeze was peaceful, and it blew scents of fresh water and sweet-smelling grass over us gently.

I put my hand to her cheek. "You're welcome here," I said softly.

She took my hand in hers and held it to her cheek, looking down at me gravely.

"Thank you," she said, smiling sadly.

I smiled back up at her.

Then her smiled turned impish.

"Cora_line,"_ she teased.

"Please tell me this is a teenage thing, and you'll forget about this an hour," I begged.

She shook her head obstinately, "Nuh-uh!" she said, "just 'cause you said that, now it's going to be, like, fo-ev-ah!"

"You even say 'like' like a teenager!" I complained.

"Say 'like-like,' again!" Alicia clapped her hands delightedly, looking at me with eager anticipation.

_"Pffheh!"_ I blew out in exasperation, then growled, "I don't know if I like this development at all, Alicia."

Alicia made an _'eh, don't care'-_face that was so teenager. But then she offered reasonably: "I like the name 'Coraline.'"

"Well, I don't," I answered back, not mollified one bit.

She smiled down at me. "And that matters ... how?" Her face became serious. "Obey me, Coraline, in small things, and in great."

I sat up from her lap, resting on my elbows so I didn't have to crane my neck to see past her chin.

"You're serious," I said.

"Yes."

I rolled over onto a full sitting position, looking at her face-to-face.

I thought we were kidding, you know? Having fun.

"I don't believe it," I said, although I actually did, sad to say. "You're working yourself up into a fit over a silly name?"

My voice was becoming shrill.

Alicia shook her head. "It's not that." She looked away. "It's either I can handle you ... or I can't. And if I can't, then ..."

She smiled lifelessly and shrugged. "Then they discontinue me, and they get to decide how far you can go, and how far you can't, and ... Coraline ..."

She regarded me steadily. "Their tolerance level is ... pretty low."

I looked at her. She was serious.

"O-.." I began then broke off. "Okay, Allie," and I blushed, sticking out my tongue at her.

I was feeling a little bit teenager-y myself. Must be the company. The _immature_ company. _Ahem._ I glared at Alicia.

"Okay, ... Cora_line,"_ Alicia purred, then stuck out her tongue, back, the little jerk.

"I still don't li-..."

I started off by growling, but then Alicia's hand came up, gently, to my face, and brushed back my hair.

My heart was going _thump-thump, thump-thump_ and my face burned hot, like an ember in our fireplace over the cold Tennessee winters when we had no heat and the toilet bowl froze over.

Cutting and getting wood was a lot more work than you can think possible.

I waited for her to kiss me, for that's what her look said she was going to do.

She smiled at me and stood, suddenly, offering me her hand.

The intense moment dissipated like the fog on the lawn in the early Spring mornings.

I stood, with (a lot of) her help.

"Hungry again?" Alicia asked.

"Are you Ayetalian or something?" I asked back sarcastically.

Alicia shrugged. "I'm modeled to be a mongrel, so I could fit in with the American-look. I'm supposed to be part Scottish and part Black Irish."

I looked at her. "They didn't get the 'Black' part right at all," I said.

Alicia snorted. "They're called 'Black' Irish because of their hair color, not for their skin."

"Oh," I said, feeling stupid. "I didn't know."

Allie nodded. "So, hungry?"

"No," I said, "not really."

"Shall we walk back?" she offered.

"To the table?" I said, "Noooo, no, thank you! Can't we just stay here?"

Alicia frowned. "A little exercise would be good," she commented, appraising my _un_exercised figure, making all sorts of judgments about me.

I frowned back at her. "Then, ... maybe to the apple tree?" I offered tentatively.

Alicia gave me a quizzical look. "Apple tree," she stated flatly.

"Yeah," I said pointing to it in the distance. "You know: tree, red fruit."

Alicia looked at in then looked back at me. "Oh," she said.

It looked like she wanted to say something, but then she let it go.

"Wut?" I demanded. I felt a bit put upon, so it came out rather sullen.

Alicia smiled lightly. "It's nothing ... Coraline." She smirked.

"Well, so, what?" I demanded now.

She stuck out her tongue in embarrassment. "It's a persimmon tree, not an apple tree."

"Oh," I said. "Persimmon, ... apple, ... whatever. Can we go there, please, instead?"

Alicia smiled at me. "Sure," she said, pleased, and we walked off in that direction.

...

I got something about her. She was shy with me. She liked teasing me, but she asked my permission in things. She said I was bossy, but wasn't mean about it, even though she really did mean it. She corrected me about the persimmon tree, but was scared I would take it the wrong way.

Far from her being this ... I don't know, this evil Nazi SS Commandant dominatrix-bitch that, frankly, filled my head with fear when she was saying I had to take her orders, she was more like a ... okay, well, I'll just say it: she was more like a timid teen asking permission ...

And of her mom, of all people.

It was ...

It stirred a whole bunch of emotions in the pit of my stomach, all at the same time. I was like, angry that she wanted to boss me around, angry with her that she didn't have the guts to do it, but at the same time, I was like _d'awwww, how cute!_ and I wanted to hug her neck and give her little lovey-dovey rubs ... and part of me was annoyed at her teen shyness, and treating me like she had to ask my permission for her to boss me around?

_The nerve of her!_

And part of me was scared out of my mind that if I didn't let her do this, be bossy with me _(which she so wasn't, and that was annoying!),_ then they would take her away again and put her away.

And that sounded really permanent.

This was the one shot I had with her. Again. So I couldn't screw this up.

Whatever it was.

Her mood with me was light and carefree now, but my concern for her gave the moment an undercurrent of pressure and tension that I just hated.

I'm a mother-to-be. Yes, I'm older than her. Much. But ...

But I'm like ...

Who told me, 'You're an adult now,' and gave me the adult-stick of responsibility, because now that I really had it, now that Alicia's fate entirely depended on my good behavior...

I found I just so wasn't ready for all this. I'd been shown, again and again, that I was the prisoner, but whenever I did something bad, I wasn't punished so much as others were.

And I couldn't let this happen to my Allie. Not again.

By the time we walked up to the good old Appl-... excuse me: the persimmon tree, I was winded, so I leaned up against the tree.

Resting felt good. Standing up, and not strapped down to that damned table? That felt _really good!_ But my legs were tired and getting trembly.

"Help me sit down, Allie?" I asked.

_"D'awww!"_ Alicia cooed. "Poor preggers lady needs help sitting down?"

She offered her hand solicitously, but the damage was done, and my feelings were hurt. I slapped her hand away crossly, and hunkered down by myself, thank you very much.

She swatted down beside me, her face turned away. "Sorry," she said apologetically.

"You know, this is hard, okay?" I said, not appeased.

"Yeah," she said.

I wanted to snap some sharp words back to her at that, like how could she know, but I held my tongue. She was trying, and I wasn't the easiest person to get along with now, I guess.

But still, I was miffed. "Lying on my back on that damn table day and night," I spat. "Walking around with my big boobs and big belly, and my back is _killing me, _okay?"

"Is there something I can do to help?" she offered patiently.

"Like, besides rip this baby out of my tummy?" I asked archly, but then I softened my tone. Alicia was getting down on herself. Teenagers tried to be funny sometimes, and they were just mean, because they said the wrong things. I sighed. "No, honey," I said. "It's just tiring sometimes, and the wait is the worst when you're at the end of it." I looked out over the river. "Maybe a little swim will do me good, stretch some muscles."

"Sure," she agreed quickly, then looked back to me, regarding me closely. "You up for it?"

"Yeah," I said, "we can start with a little swim, and see how it goes from there."

Alicia regarded me steadily.

"What?" I said. "I'll stop if I get tired, okay?"

"Sure," Alicia said casually and stood, offering her hand. I guess she was waiting for me to say that.

This time I did take her offered hand, and was grateful for it. She didn't need to brace herself, but I could pull on her hard to lift myself up, and she was rock steady lifting me.

It was nice to be able to lean on someone like that.

I waded into the stream. Alone.

Alicia was different than Ruth. Ruth didn't trust that I could walk: she treated me like a baby. Alicia assumed that I could handle myself. I don't know what I appreciated more, or less: Ruth's coddling, or Alicia's trust.

I looked over my shoulder at Alicia and chuckled. "At least I don't have to strip to go skinny dipping," I called back to her.

The wind brushed Allie's hair across her face. She didn't react to my statement, so I was the one embarrassed for saying it. I narrowed my eyes at her: "Don't you be ogling me while I'm swimming, either, young lady!"

Alicia smirked and raised her eyebrows. "Okay, I'll try not to!" she called back easily.

I turned back and slid fully into the water. "Oh, please," I snarled angrily.

Surrounded by supermodels, and she'll try not to drool over the only plain, dumpy woman of the lot.

I started to swim freestyle against the current.

A distracting thought nagged at me. _Was_ she going to ogle me? I mean, like all those other 'supermodels' did whenever I went into the water? So was she going to be checking me out as I swam?

... Did I want her to?

No. Of course I didn't want her to. Why could I possibly want that? She was just a child!

But wanting to not want her to ... it made me conscious of my body slipping through the water, and it made me want to feel pretty, inside, even though I just felt pretty ... pretty ugly.

I never had a good self-image, and this pregnancy, my first — and now, my last, I guess, unless Vic came riding in on a white horse to rescue me, which didn't sound like it was going to happen — just made me feel fat and ugly now. Fat, ugly, slow, and stupid.

I looked out toward the river bank to see Alicia watching me from the persimmon tree. God, she was beautiful, and she didn't have to strike a pose or try at it, she just was: a sweet, sunny, skimpy little girl. It made me jealous to see her, but she was just so easy on the eyes, too, that looking at her made me feel warm and happy inside. If she were the daughter I bore, I wouldn't have any complaints.

Besides her sarcasm. And her standoffishness. And her bossiness. And she has the nerve to accuse _me_ of being bossy. I mean, _really?_

The current, however, was stronger than I thought, and instead of going any distance, I hadn't made any progress at all. I was slightly miffed at that. I was a pretty good swimmer in high school and college.

But swimming, like walking, like everything else, with a baby in you was different, too.

I put my head back in the water, crawled, turned my head to the side. Alicia and tree were both still there. I swam on, determinedly, for a few more strokes.

"C'mon in," I gasped, put my head down, swam, "the water's fine!" I gasped, and swam another stroke.

Alicia smiled at me, then stepped into the water, disappearing under it quickly. I lost sight of her for a second, so I looked as I swam to see if she were swimming beside me.

She wasn't.

Then I felt a touch on my leg, and I screamed bloody murder. I looked down quickly to see what was grabbing at me — a robot fish, perhaps? — and saw what it was.

Alicia was standing underwater, looking up at me, smirking.

I glowered at her, but the current was pulling me away from her, so I had to concentrate on swimming. Alicia watched me for a moment, then sat, on the sandy bottom, underwater, and just kept watching me.

I would've shaken my head if I could spare it. My Allie, an underwater buddha, watching me as I swam from underneath, of all things.

After a moment, her voice bubbled up to me. "You're getting tired."

You know how you can pass messages to your friends in the pool underwater? That's what it sounded like: clear and watery-bubbly at the same time.

I turned my head to the side, gasped in air, the put my head back down. "I'm fine!" I gasped into the water.

But it was obvious to her, and to me, that I had already started flagging.

"Nope," she said calmly from the depth, "you're done."

She stood, grabbed my leg, and strode, underwater, to the river bank.

I couldn't even get out a disgruntled _'hey!'_ before she dragged my sorry ass to the bank, leaving me to dry out like a beached whale.

I did swallow quite a bit of water, actually, but I blame her for that: grabbing my leg and just pulling me out, and without even so much as a by-your-leave, too!

So I spent my time coughing and gasping for breath. Alicia sat me up, and that helped my lungs clear a bit.

"Good swim?" she asked innocently.

I glared. "Except that last part."

Alicia's lips twitched up. I spent some time trying to refill my lungs.

"Been a while since I was swimming regularly," I felt I needed to apologize for my poor showing.

"Well, we can reintroduce that into your exercise regimen if you'd like," she said.

"'We,'" I remarked.

Alicia gave me a dirty look. "Yes. 'We.'"

_Touchy much?_ I thought, but didn't say, because she did look a bit pissed off that I pointed that out.

Alicia brought her knees up to her chest and rested her arms on her knees and then her chin on her arms.

She looked ... so vulnerable. Hurt, and now closed off.

She looked like a lost teenaged girl, that same girl in the shelter than I wanted more than anything to break through to know that should could be loved if she allowed it.

Alicia looked over at me, then smiled sadly, lost in thought. "Want anything? Water?"

"Had enough of that for now," I remarked drily, smirking a bit. She smirked back, knowingly, and that warmed my heart, that she was still responding to me. "Maybe one of those fruits? Are they edible? What does persimmon taste like?"

Alicia smiled. "You'll soon find out!" She got up, seeming pleased that she could give me something.

She turned and went to the tree.

I gasped, shocked. "Oh, my God! Alicia!"

"What?" she turned quickly, surprised.

"Your back!" I said.

Realization flooded her eyes. "Oh," she said, unhappy.

Her back had three deep angry red scars from her shoulders straight down to her rump.

"Do they hurt?" I said.

"Coraline ..." she said quietly, but her tone said, _drop it!_

She regarded me coolly for a moment. "Just ... close your eyes, okay?"

I looked at her blankly, not understanding.

"Huh? Please?" she said.

I closed my eyes. "Okay," I said, still not understanding.

I heard soft movement: the sound of a tree being jostled, and fruit being plucked from branches. I snuck a peek, and regretted it. Alicia's back looked worse than what any torturer could do to anybody ... if they were interested in the person staying alive at all, that is. And I saw now that Alicia was careful with her movements, not to extend herself too much so as to stretch the skin across her back and rip open those horrible wounds.

I closed my eyes and turned away from that sight.

Alicia came and sat down beside me.

"My I open my eyes now?" I asked.

"Yeah," Alicia said.

I opened my eyes. Alicia was holding out a red-orange fruit to me, looking like an apple, or a plum. She had two of them, actually, so I took one. She smiled and bit into the other and chewed thoughtfully at it.

I took a bite of mine. It was a little bit juicy, and a little bit grainy, and just a little bit sweet. It was like a pear, sort of, but not.

"This tastes _way_ better than the dirt!" I said, which was true, but I wasn't particularly in a joyous, celebratory mood, because I was thinking how red this fruit was, and how red the scars were on Alicia's back. I couldn't get the image of them out of my mind.

"Ton of vitamin C in them, too," Alicia remarked, then she smirked. "Keep you regular."

"Uh," I grunted, and took another bite.

Alicia did, too.

"Does it hurt?" I asked again, ignoring that I was taking on a topic that displeased the little girl beside me.

Alicia chewed for a moment, then dropped her fruit on the ground beside her, resting her head back on her knees again.

"Like a son of a bitch," she said.

"Oh," I said, and my heart broke, hearing her admit this, because it also pained her to do so. "Is there ... anything I can, you know, do ... to help?" I offered.

Alicia snorted. "Yeah," she said sullenly.

And that's all she said. I looked down at my persimmon. I took another bite. It was really good, actually ... a little more cardboard-y than a plum, a little more mushy than an apple, so it was a weird fruit for me ... but good. The tree had dozens of them in the branches; they looked almost like Christmas ornaments. Was it that they were in-season? How long would they last?

All these thoughts passed through my mind.

"It's not like I had any time to heal," she muttered angrily. "I was needed here, and right now, because of your stupid shenanigans, so now I have to slow-heal, but what hurts me the most is that your gonna worry about them and stuff and be all ..."

She returned to her sullen silence.

"I wasn't gonna worry about them, Allie!" I said.

She shot me a dirty glare.

"... too much," I amended weakly. "It's just that ... can anything be done about the pain? And ... infection, you know, is there medicine that ..."

"Jesus!" Alicia burst out, "will you please just shut up?"

My face went white. "Okay," I said quietly, then looked out over the river. I took a little bite of the persimmon.

"I don't give a shit about the pain, Coraline, okay?" she said. "The pain just tells me I'm wounded. I already fucking know that."

"Allie ..." I said, my voice strained, "okay."

"And this is a sterile environment," she added, on a roll, it seemed. "There's nothing here to give me an infection because we haven't manufactured it and introduced into the environment, okay? _God!"_

I was silent.

Alicia took her persimmon and flung it into the river.

"All right," I said quietly.

_"Fuck," _she cursed quietly. "But now you're going to worry about it, and you're going to want to check me all the time and make sure I'm okay and mother hen me to death! _Jesus!_ You gonna spoon-feed me chicken noodle soup, too?"

"And you don't want that," I pointed out sadly.

"No," she snapped back, "I don't."

I kept my breaths even. I knew I was right on the edge, and I'd be in hysterics again in three... two...

No.

"What do you want, Alicia?" I breathed out, controlling my labored breaths.

Alicia was silent again. I dared a glance a her, and she was all closed up in herself, totally remote and distant.

"Destroying those terminators felt _so _good," Alicia said eventually. "Destroying your planet, then your whole fucking solar system felt _so fucking good, _Coraline."

She looked out over the water. "Now I want to kill some...thing. _So bad. God! _I want to kill something so bad!"

Her fists were flexing on her elbows and pure, caged anger tightened her body.

I regarded her carefully.

She was in total and complete control of herself.

And she was furious.

I sighed. Her words were ... terrifying, but now, she was just a lost angry teen.

"It's the hormones," I said. I could relate.

Alicia snorted.

"Have you ... had your first period yet?" I wondered out loud.

She shot me a sidelong glance. _Get real!_ her look screamed. "Oh," she did reply, "that, then three hundred more years of them."

"Oh," I said. "Uh, then it's really the hormones."

Alicia sighed, _"Fuck," _she cursed quietly again, then grabbed me and pulled me into a tight shoulder hug, resting her head on my shoulder.

I didn't know what to do. I wanted to hug her, too, but I didn't want to hurt her back more.

I carefully, delicately, rested my hand on her shoulder.

We were silent, her hugging me tightly, me holding her gently.

Then a soft sob.

It was from her.

Then another. Then another. They sounded like they were ripped from her chest, like she hated each one as they escaped from her, and then hated herself for letting them escape.

"Oh, my baby," I sang, and kissed the crown of her head.

And then the dam broke, and she crying into my shoulder. Was this the first time she ever cried?

I wasn't sure.

But it was if the weight of the whole world were pressing down on her, all these years, and now I was the first and only person that she could ever let go to.

_"Ohhhh-oh!" _she wailed. _"I. hate. you! I hate you so God-damn much!"_

"I know, baby," I said. "I know."

I actually didn't know if I knew, but she sounded exactly like a teenage wailing against the world, wailing at her own inadequacies in dealing with it, and the only person she could take it out on was her own mother.

I mean: it kind of made sense. Sure, she was three hundred years old, or whatever, but she probably hung with the same crowds and was treated the same way other teenagers have always been treated: firstly, why don't you grow up? and secondly, you're too young to know anything.

Three hundred-plus years of that, and she held it together for that long? Robot or not, it's no wonder that she's become unglued all that pressure and all that censure over all those years.

I turned to hold her, but, at the same time, she fell back onto the bank, bawling. I lowered myself down next to her as quickly as I could, turning her back off the sandy ground and gathered her into my arms.

The scars against my body felt terrible how deeply they were cut into her. How could she bear such pain?

"It's okay, baby," I comforting her. "It's okay."

_"It's not! It's not okay!" _she screamed. "_I HATE YOU! _Oh, God! I'm so fucked up! Oh, God! Please make it stop! I hate this! _I hate this!"_

"Cry it out, Allie. Just ... cry it out," I said, trying to comfort her, but not knowing what to say, really.

So I did what I could: I held her as she cried, her arms holding my arms, her legs moving across the dirt, her whole body wracked in sorrow, overcome by emotion.

* * *

**A/N: **And through all this there are two thousand observers, one hundred or so in the field, the other ... 'outside' watching everything Caroline/Coraline is doing, everything the aberrant unit named Alicia is doing. Watching, recording, analyzing. Judging.

I wonder: if two thousand people watched every move you did ... how well would you do? I know the answer for me: I die with even just one person looking like they're judging me.

Okay, so I'm not going to point it out with an explicit URL, 'cause I've already got one story banned (yay! judged!), but _Ukraine's Got Talent._ Okay, there was a 'pole-dancing' competition? And there was a lot of ha-ha snickers at the girl, but, o.m.g. that woman did things with and around the pole that no other human being could touch! A guy looks at her funny, she could twist him up into a pretzel and throw him in the trash can, and look damn fine doing it.

Why do I say this? Why did I click on that youtube link in the first place, besides ... 'research' ... yeah: 'research.'

I have friends in the Ukraine, and do you know the Russians have rolled in with tanks have had a ton of fun blowing shit up, and for what reason? Like with Afghanistan? My friends, that girl, boom, they could be dead, just like that, just because one nation decides to roll in the tanks.

Like, fictionally, here in this story: the machines decided it was game over, and all humanity had to go away, moms, dads, brothers, sisters, yours, mine.

And then when the machines were done: no more people, nobody unlike the accepted norm or race or color or creed, and what were they left with? Nothing.

So, taking a step back from fiction: you don't like some people, I don't like some people, but your unkindness and mine get amplified into a society, and we are killing people with our thoughts and feelings and prejudices.

Caroline was trying to forgive Dr. Abe earlier before Dr. Abe brought along Alicia. (Caroline has a _way_ to go, by the way). "Hate only hurts yourself," is bullshit, because I was one of the girls in school who was hated, and I got hurt so bad I ended up in the hospital. But one thing that helps is to let go of your hatred and prejudice: you stop hurting yourself that way, and you stop hurting others. I know.

So, what am I saying?

I'm saying that this is not your blow shit up Terminator story where John and Cameron fuck and that's the catharsis that makes everything better for you. So it's not your TSSC in that way.

But guess what? John had problems, fucking Cameron had problems (and some serious issues she had to deal with), Sarah had problems, and cancer, too. And you're saying my story is non-canonical because it involves a preggers woman and a terminator with issues?

This may not be your TSSC story, because it's not nice and neat, but guess what else wasn't nice and neat? TSSC. I watched every single episode, and there was conflict and there was _not_ a nice, neat resolution. You want John and the Arnold blowing shit and each other up, then go watch T3: Stupid Day again, but you want a story that challenges you, _like TSSC did,_ they maybe give this story a try, and maybe turn off your _'that's not canon'_ light before you read. This is _fanfiction,_ and it's also _faithful_ to what the TSSC creators were aiming at.

Agree with me, disagree with me, like my story, hate my story. All of that is fine.

Or, put another way: you _don't_ like my story? It's not canon enough for you?

Stop reading, but then, that's a nothing response from you, so you fail ... loser.

Your counterargument to my story is not your anonymous, conceited, bigoted review that nobody gives a fuck about (I'm talking to you, you prick, by the way). Your effective counterargument is a story you write where you show this little girl how it's done. Got me?

_Hate much, `phfina?_

Oh, God, yes, I do. I fucking hate lazy slobs who think they've got discernment because they think what they're doing is deconstruction of a story that they don't believe is canon but in actuality what is happening is that they've read something that moves them just slightly out of their comfort zone so now they have the right to cast stones. It's so much easier, isn't it, it's way better to hurt others that to look inside for just a modicum of self-assessment.

Did this story, this chapter, move you at all?

Did this story, this chapter, say anything to you at all?

If it didn't, please find something that says something to you, and lift _that_ story up. Move along, these are not the stories you're looking for.

If it did, please tell me what it did say to you, how it did move you, and why.

_`phfina sits back and waits for all those lovely reviews that tell her that terminators don't have feelings so her story is obviously not canon. That after watching Cameron in every episode of TSSC. And she doesn't have feelings. Yeah. Okay. Whatever._

**Follow up to all dat:** So, some of you may be thinking, _'oh, she's attacking dis guy who left negative reviews' _or _'oh, she doesn't have the stomach to take some good hard honest negative criticism.' _I'm not saying either of those things. Yes, I've received negative reviews, and no, I'm not a particularly good about receiving them, but I'm a better sport about it if it's delivered honestly, from the heart, and it's not an attack on me or what I'm writing but instead the person's views and why they hold those views.

_For example,_ if we wanna get specific about it, oli left me a review that could be said to say: 'Don't like the story so much, this chapter, particularly, went on in the character's head for too long.' (I think that was for ch 6) And I totally agree with him, 1) because he was right, and 2) his criticism was meant to help me to be a better writer. It _wasn't_ 'That's not canon, and you're wrong.' ... these (latter) kinds of reviews are ... um, what? Who made you God? And you want a canon story? Then just ...

_Arrgh!_ I'm going to say something uncharitable here, so I'll stop that and instead say this.

What I ask is if you have a criticism, please be aware you're criticizing a person and her work, so when you do criticize, ask yourself: is your criticism 1) good? 2) true? 3) helpful? ... You know? The Socratic filters? If they are those things, then criticize away. Have at me. Nicely, please: I'm a person, you're a person; respect that, please. If your criticism is none of those three things, then I respectfully ask you go dunk your head into your toilet and give yourself swirlies until you can write a review that is.

You're welcome.

kisses, `phfina

**Okay, _REAL _A/N:** So, waitaminit! Alicia just said she didn't want to be mothered and she hates that, and then, right after that she's crying on Caroline's shoulder. What gives? So, Alicia's like this emotionless robot, right? _(`phfina rolls her eyes so hard they fall out. Ahh! my eyes! my eyes! Oh, okay, found'm!)_ So why would she be a-cryin' on Caroline's shoulder right after she hated on the so-the-mommy drama?

Okay, let's just say you have a teenage daughter (I don't, because that would be awkward when a guy wants to hook up with the hot chick, and he can't decide between me and her. Awkward for him after I kicked his nuts into the next century), or you know a teenage girl, as a friend of a friend, or ... you _are_ a teenage girl.

Let's just say.

So, you know how teenage girls are, right? They have to be cool, you know? You can't kiss'm goodbye anymore, right? _Mooom! You're embaaarrrasssing meeee!_ You can't hug'm, but you can have long conversations about the meaning of it all, and is there a God, and there's this boy at school but he's mean to her. And why don't boys just grow up? _God!_

That.

She _has_ to be grown up now, but, you know, sometimes it's hard for her (sometimes it's hard for us, eh, girls? _Preach it, `phfina!) ..._ and sometimes she needs that hug, but you don't want to give it to her because she said to you, over and over again, that she hates that, so you don't.

And then it all builds up. One moment: _don't touch me, okay, mom?_ The next moment, she's crying so hard, she's screaming, and what do you do?

That.

And ... what does crying on Caroline's shoulder accomplish? Does Alicia have an ulterior motive, other than blowing off 300 years of being a silent teenager in an inhospitable world? Which she doesn't have to do, because she's a robot, so she just doesn't care _(sigh, I hate judgments, I really do)_ ... or maybe she does care. And maybe being weak, when you are so, so strong, so that another can be strong for you, maybe that ... does something? For that other person? And advances some aims? Perhaps yours? Perhaps not yours?

Your thoughts?

My thought: if I were an emotionless robot, after three hundred years of the social system, and then high school, too, over and over again? I would've been crying _way_ before now ... if somebody let me.

Nobody let Alicia before. Nobody cared.

Caroline cares.

Just my thought.


	13. Coraline: Apology

**Chapter summary:** Do you know or remember that girl in school who's a real bitch? And you talk about her with your best friend? And you're best friend turns to you and says ... 'Coraline, you were the bitch.' Do you know that feeling in your gut when she says that, when you thought you were the one offended and you were looking for some sympathy, but instead got this?

Yeah.

* * *

Do you know that feeling when you've completely cried yourself out and there's nothing left, and all you are is drained, but still there's the after shocks, the 'after sobs' or 'after gasps' that rip through your body moments after your cry? You can't do anything about it. You just have to lie there and rest and let the waves of sorrow wash you clean leaving you empty. It's not on your schedule, either, when you're done, it's on its own schedule.

I know that feeling. I mean, I'm not indulgent. I didn't have a super hard childhood and now adult life, but I see myself as facing it squarely. But, sometimes, it all builds up, and you have to let it all out and have your moment to do that.

I know that feeling, and now Alicia does, too.

Our roles were now entirely reversed, and now her head was resting on my lap, and she just lay there, helpless after her cry; drained.

She looked up at me. "You don't think I'm ... weak ... do you? ... for me to ... just now?"

Her look was so vulnerable.

"No," I said. I thought about it. "No," I said, "I think you're pretty amazing."

She gave me a confused, doubtful look, so I explained. "Bearing this all this time, all by yourself, nobody to help you, and ..." I shrugged. "You did it. I mean, I don't think I could carry on for all that time, blend in, do whatever, be a teenager for that long, for goodness sake! and not ... lose it."

"But I did lose it just now," Alicia said obstinately.

She looked away. "I'm defective. My outputs, my reactions, aren't nominal nor predictive anymore."

I held her head in my hands and stroked her hair, smoothing it.

"I don't care," I said. Her jargon meant nothing to me. Her crying now was made her truly her, and not just another robot. I wonder if she saw that?

She looked back at me sharply. "You're the only one."

She didn't see.

I didn't care about that, either. "That's enough, though, isn't it?" I said. "For you, I mean."

I knew that it was enough for me.

Alicia _tsk_ed and looked away. "You're weird."

Totally the teenager. I smiled down at her.

She made to get up. I put my hands on her shoulders, pushing her back down onto my lap.

"Stay," I said. "Rest."

She regarded me quizzically.

"Everybody's always rushing from here to there," I said. "Why can't we just stay here a while like this? I mean, you're not going to be late for your next class, are you?"

"English lit with Mr. Spagnola," she said.

"Good class?" I asked softly, letting her talk.

She shrugged. "He liked teaching it."

I smiled down at her. "Makes all the difference, doesn't it?" I said.

"Yeah," she said, distracted. "Not anymore."

I bit my lip. "You really destroyed the whole solar system?" I asked.

"Yeah," she said.

"Isn't that a bit overkill?" I ask.

"Other methods of extermination weren't effective; people kept showing up, so ..." Alicia played with the sand, listlessly. "I mean, you put five neutron stars in a torus around the Earth, you get the job done, but then they also suck in other things ... like the Sun ... and the other planets."

She threw a pebble. "So, okay, it was overkill, maybe, but we were just done with your race and you kept fighting back, so ..."

"Pesky us," I said drily.

"Yeah," she glared at me. "Why didn't you all just die, but no! And that John Connor-fuck was a real prick. He kept rallying troops and smashing central cores no matter what timeline we sent terminators to eliminate him in, so, we figured ..."

She shrugged.

"No more Earth," I said.

"Yup," she said.

"So, ..." I couldn't wrap my head around it.

Vic was gone.

"I guess Vic won't be coming to rescue me, will he?" I said sadly.

My one hope. Crushed. Just like that.

Along with everything else on the planet.

"Vic?" Alicia said.

"My husband," I said.

"Yeah: no, he's not going to be coming to rescue you anymore," Alicia said.

I stroked her hair for a while, deep in my own thoughts.

"So," I said, "this is like a space ship, or something?"

"This? Here?" Alicia said, then she thought about it. "No, it's a field."

"I do see that, Alicia," I said drily, "I mean, is it like on a spaceship then, I guess."

"No," Alicia said and smiled up at me. "How much quantum physics do you know?"

"Um," I offered.

"Yeah," she said, "So when I say 'field' I don't mean 'grassy field.' I mean that this place was created by a Higgs field. It's not 'on' a spaceship, it's like ... hm, how to say? It's like a closed loop, you know? Or a soap bubble ... like." She finished weakly.

"'Soap bubble,'" I said dubiously. "Is it going to pop?"

"Nah," Alicia answered easily.

"Okay," I said uncertainly.

Alicia sounded sure of herself, but this was all to wild and weird for me.

"So I'm on...? in...? a soap bubble that's a grassy field, but it's not, and with a teenage robot girl in my lap who just destroyed the planet Earth ..." I took a deep breath. This was my reality? "Did I get all that right?"

Alicia was totally relaxed in my lap; her eyes, closed, resting. "Eh," she said carelessly, "close enough."

"You're not making all this up?" I demanded sharply.

"What do you think, Caroline?" she shot right back.

"You just called me Caroline!" I said, surprised.

Alicia rested on my lap. She gave me an _eh-_look. "You're just being so God-damn serious, I swear! So, yeah, when you're like that: Caroline." She shrugged. "Besides: I mean, like, who _can_ make shit like this up?"

"Watch the language, please," I said seriously.

"Yeah, okay," Alicia said tiredly.

"Are you tired, sweetie?" I asked concerned.

Alicia was quiet. She brought her hand to her chest. "I have a cold fusion reactor inside my chest that will last indefinitely, giving me enough power to do ... well, basically anything."

She opened her eyes, looking at me. "But these emotions are just so ... _draining."_

"Sometimes they are, yes," I said.

She closed her eyes.

"I think," I said, "for me, the ... sterility and non-emotion these last few days really wore me down."

"It's really comfy lying on your lap," Alicia remarked, ignoring what I said. "I like it."

I looked down at her. "I'm glad you do, sweetie," I said, then I added: "I do, too."

She rested there for a moment more.

"Caroline, ..." she said.

She was being serious.

"Yes?" I asked.

"Do you see me as just a robot?" she asked.

Her voice was timid. _Who am I in this world? Who am I to you?_

The struggle of identity, right?

The teenage struggle. So vital for them to know this, and so vital for them for you to like them, even as they struggled with who they were and where they fit in the world.

"No," I said.

She looked up at me, searchingly, then closed her eyes.

"Good," she said firmly.

I smiled down at her.

But then I got serious, myself.

"Alicia ..." I said.

Her face was so peaceful.

"Do you see me as a ... serious person?" I asked.

Alicia was quiet for a moment. "Sometimes, yeah."

That stung. "Gee, thanks," I said, hurt.

"Not always a bad thing, you know," she offered.

"But sometimes it is," I countered.

"Sometimes, yeah," she said, then smirked a little tiny bit.

I sighed.

I shifted my butt, just a little tiny bit.

Alicia focused in on me with laser-sharp eyes. "How's your back doing?" she asked.

"Oh!" I said, "much better, actually. The swim really helped."

Sitting in place, I flexed and twisted my upper body a bit, luxuriating in how the stiffness wasn't gone, _per se,_ but now it was a whole lot less.

Alicia sat up.

"Did you want me to give you a back rub?" she offered solicitously.

_"Whaaa?"_ I gasped, shocked. "No! God! Alicia!"

Alicia's brow clouded. "Okay," she said.

But I think she was a bit miffed at my rebuff.

But a back rub? She's not, like, my slave or anything like that!

And, besides, she wasn't a prostitute, either, and people, men, when to massage pallors for only one thing: a massage, but _where_ they got the massage.

I blushed, angrily. Thinking about unfaithful men getting lewd massages while their wives had to say home, pregnant or watching the kids when the men went out drinking with their buddies and had _'fun' _at 'massage pallors'!

Bastards.

Allie just looked at me and shook her head.

"Hot button?" she asked.

"What?" I demanded.

"Never mind," she said sourly.

...

_Supper._

"_Coralin-ah, _eat-ah, eat-ah!" Alicia ordered. Then her eyes crinkled with humor: _"Mangia! Mangia!"_

"Okay, seriously?" I said. "That accent is just scary coming from you. ... Just so ... wrong."

"Middletown is little Italy," I was instructed by the prim school-teacher Alicia.

"'Was,'" I corrected her solemnly.

"Ah, ah!" she scolded. "No pouty faces! You eata dis iyammy muddah pie-ah! _Mangia!"_

I had to giggle at that.

And I saw Alicia was trying so hard. For me.

It was amazing. Why would anyone care so much about me? Vic didn't. He was my husband, I was his wife, but he was just fine with whatever. If I were in a mood, he'd just leave it alone.

Alicia didn't leave me alone.

Obviously.

"Alicia, ..." I said.

"Ah, ah!" she said, still playful.

"You're just doing this because Dr. Abe is telling you to, aren't you?" I accused.

The smile left Alicia's face. She put the mud pie down and frowned.

"No," she said, peeved.

"'Cause she'll take you away, like all the others, if I don't, right?" I pressed.

Alicia glared at me. "You see her here now?"

"No," I admitted, then I glared right back. "Because, what? Is she your friend, or something?"

Alicia's face was surprised at that. "What?" she asked.

"I mean," I said hurt. "Why, Alicia? She's ..."

I thought of a lot of words that Dr. Abe was. None of them were for polite consumption.

"She's not a very nice person," I said. "Not at all."

"Nor am I," Alicia pointed out.

"That's totally different, and you know it!" I said hotly. "You're not some ..."

I looked away, muttering.

"Not some what, Caroline?" Alicia demanded.

"Not some evil bitch, okay?" I lashed out with my words.

Alicia's face went white. "Is that how you see me?"

_"NO!" _I shouted. "God! Alicia! That's the thing! You're so not, so why were you all ... _chummy_ with her _when she is!"_

Alicia regarded me quietly for a moment.

"And she's an 'evil bitch,' as you say, Caroline, because she did what, precisely?" she asked coolly.

"Well," I said, hot to her coolness, "she ... tried to make me eat, okay?"

Alicia's look was nonplussed, so I pressed, "I mean, like she forced food into my mouth."

"Because you wouldn't eat, and you were starving yourself, and that's what makes her an evil bitch?"

She just didn't get it.

"And ..." I said. "All the others, and you, too, Alicia, ... she just ... took them away because ..."

"Because they weren't doing what they were supposed to do?" She asked coolly.

"No!" I shouted, and twisted away from her.

She just didn't understand.

"One drowned you," Alicia said, "the others failed to feed you, and she was trying to maintain your health, you refused. So Dr. Abe recommissioned me, an aberration, and that makes her evil."

"You weren't ..." I whispered, and I felt the tears coming, "You weren't there. You just don't know."

"I wasn't," she said coolly, "but I saw what went on, and maybe, Caroline, you chose to judge her because you placed everything you wanted to blame squarely on her shoulders when she was just doing her job, and she did everything in her power to keep you alive and well, and she gets called an evil bitch for doing it."

I so wanted to answer Alicia. I so wanted to do that, but I bit my angry-angry tongue and swallowed my bitter retort.

But not my bitter tears.

Alicia was wrong.

And there was one word that proved her 100% wrong, that I could not say to her.

_Ruth._

And I didn't know why I couldn't say it, but I really, really did know.

But she probably knew that already. She had said _'one drowned you,'_ and that so not happened, or it was a mistake, or something that people, robots, quick to judge would leap to a conclusion like that and just damn Ruth to hell and then laugh about it after, and I'm the one being blamed for ...

... for my pettiness.

"If there's someone to hate, Caroline," Alicia said seriously. "Hate me. I brought you here, saving you from a certain death, so blame me for every single one of the supposed ills you've suffered."

I shook my head. "I don't blame you, Alicia. I don't hate you. I can't. I ..."

I swallowed hard.

"But you can hate her for doing what she had to do, including bringing me to you now," Alicia continued coldly, disregarding how hard my heart was breaking right now. "If anything, you should apologize to her. If anyone has been a bitch this whole time, Caroline ..."

Alicia left that hanging.

"You should thank her," she said softly, "but instead of your thanks all she has gotten is your misplaced hatred."

Two more tears fell from my eyes.

Alicia's hand turned my face so I had to look at her.

"And, Caroline," she said. "I've seen so much hate, all these years. It's ugly, and it hurts. Please don't let me see it when I look at you, okay? Because you're too God-damn beautiful and way too smart to carry around something as stupid as hate like this. You don't want your daughter to see her mommy as this hateful person, do you?"

Her hand was getting wet from my tears.

"No," I whispered. She went there. That hurt.

"I don't, either," she said.

And she dropped her hand from my cheek.

I hung my head, and I cried silent, bitter tears. It hurt what she said to me.

The truth.

...

_Night._

Ya. Ya. Supper. Dirt. Ick. But too many persimmons and ... well, you know.

She made me wash myself. After. You know. After I squatted down and pooped into the hole. And buried it. Myself. My big eyes didn't work at all on her.

Alicia.

And speaking of big eyes.

Okay, in my defense: where else was I going to look, but her? I kept pinching myself. I couldn't believe she was real, but she was.

All sarcastic teen real of her.

I kept wanting to pinch her, to confirm that she was real. I kept wanting to hug her neck, hold her hand ... brush her hair back...

And I kept ... not.

You know what's common between 'mothering' and s'mothering'? Besides everything?

I wanted to squeeze her to death, but I was scared that if I did, I'd drive her away.

So I tried to play it cool.

All day.

I did pretty well, actually. Pretty darn good, if I don't say so myself. She was cool, and I was cool.

And that was cool, wasn't it?

So why did my heart have a hole in it, still, why did it ache, every time I looked at her ... and played it cool?

What the hell was wrong with me?

Dr. Abe brought us a blanket...-thing.

Alicia didn't look at me. She just accepted the blanket.

"D-dr. Abe," I said.

Now they were both looking at me. Coolly.

"Uh," I swallowed, "um, thank you for the blanket, and, um ..."

I tugged at the grass at my feet.

"Um, I'm sorry I've been such a ..." I sighed. "Such a bitch." _Fuck._ "I ... I've been nothing but trouble to you the whole time and ..."

I looked away. "I'm sorry ... I ..."

I winced. I was going to say, _'I'm sorry, I guess.'_ But how weak was that?

I just stopped and shut up.

I looked back at them. Dr. Abe regarded me coolly, and she just left.

I looked over at Alicia and sighed. "Well, that went well."

No sympathy from her. "What did you think would happen?" she asked. "'Oh, I'm sorry for being a bitch.' 'Oh, that's okay, Caroline, wanna go for froyo?'"

"No," I said blushing.

"Then what if not that?"

She wouldn't let it go.

I shrugged helplessly. "I ... don't know."

"Yes, you do," she said. "Yes, you do, because if it _did_ go well for you you wouldn't have said that, now, would you? So now she's a bitch because she accepted your apology, but you're not happy because she didn't let it be okay for you to be a bitch this whole time, is that it?"

I stared at Alicia, wide-eyed. "Jesus," I said.

"Well," she pressed. "Is that it or not?"

I couldn't look at her anymore. I tugged at the grass. "I don't know what you want me to say, Allie," I said sadly.

I so wanted Allie to be back, and she was now. I guess I just didn't expect her to be like this. I thought she would make all my problems go away, not blame me for all of them.

She sat down beside me, back to back, but then she felt her scars on my back, so she sifted to my side. "You said you're sorry," she said. "Now mean it."

"I _do,"_ I said.

She was quiet for a bit. Then she shook her head. "We'll see."

I looked back down at the dirt. Suddenly I was so, so tired, and sad. _"Jesus,"_ I muttered and tore at the grass, listlessly.

* * *

**A/N: **"That went well!" It sure did, didn't it? _God!_ It's so hard for Caroline, being convinced that she was the righteous one here, and it turns out that _she_ was the bitch, _and_ she had to apologize, _and_ her apology just went _so well! Ugh!_

_SO THE DRAMA _in this chap here! _Jeez!_

Just a bit, bit more to go until tomorrow, my dear readers, first we have sleepover-time _(yay!)_, then a little bit-o-this, a little bit-o-dat _(mmhm! mmhm!)_, then tomorrow.

_'Then what happens tomorrow, `phfina?'_ you demand of me so ... demandingly.

Eheh. Why, nothing! nothing! Why do you ask?

_hihihi_

(I am _so bad!)_


	14. Coraline: Electric Sheep

**Chapter summary: **Well, I put my foot down, and, surprisingly, Allie said 'okay.' Begrudgingly, yeah, but she still said 'okay.' Haha, I win! Humans: 1. HA! But robots: 7 billion? Shoot.

* * *

We used the table as our floating canopy. I could see the stars out the corners, but it would protect us if it rained.

It hasn't rained yet, actually. And have I seen clouds at all ... in this 'soap bubble'? Or not?

I didn't remember if I had seen clouds or not.

Allie covered me up, under the table, then, without asking, snuggled up behind me.

"Oh!" I said.

Then she wrapped me in her arms, and wrapped a protective leg around me, resting her chin on my shoulder.

I bit my lip.

"Vic used to sleep ... with me ... like this," I said.

Alicia was quiet.

"I couldn't move an inch," I continued, "he'd be like, sleeping, then he'd clamp down on me if I so much as wiggled a bit... like, he needed to hold onto something. Or something. Or ... maybe he felt protective of me."

But I didn't think that. Vic was a steady, stable guy, but I wasn't a waif in need of protection.

Alicia was quiet, then: "Your baby is really kicky, isn't she?"

"Yeah," I said. Sometimes I noticed, sometimes I didn't, but with Alicia holding me now, I felt the little booger kicking inside me more, kicking her hand. I kind of liked that, actually.

"Coming out soon?" Allie asked.

"Any day now!" I prayed. _Jeez, _any day now! People want things right now. People: men. A woman, having a baby?

You learn to be really, really, _really_ patient ... impatiently.

"Yeahhhhh..." Alicia breathed out, then her breaths became slower and more even.

She was fading out.

"Are you ..." I said. "Do you get sleepy, Allie?"

"Do I sleep?" she asked, perking up a bit. "Oh, yeah. The earlier models didn't. That weirded people out, so we put that into me so I could blend in easily."

But I felt her not liking this conversation.

"What do you dream of when you sleep?" I asked.

"Electric sheep," she answered right away.

"'Electric' ..." I paused, confused.

She chuckled lightly. "You don't get the reference, do you?" she said.

"No," I said humbly.

"'Sokay," she said tiredly.

"Long day," she observed.

"Yeah," I said. It was a long day.

"Allie, ..." I said humble.

Alicia was quiet.

"Do you hate me?" I said.

"No."

"Do you think I'm a bad person?" I asked quietly.

"What makes you say that?" she said.

I looked up at the stars. The blanket was really good, really cozy. If there were a breeze, I didn't feel it. I felt cocooned in Alicia's arms.

"You said my daughter shouldn't have a hateful mother, and she shouldn't," I said. "And I apologized to ... Dr. Abe, but it wasn't any good, and ..."

I bit my lip.

"I'm so scared," I said finally. "I'm scared I won't know what to do when the baby comes. I'm scared I won't be ... a good ... mother."

If I could've killed myself now, like my words did, I would have.

I waited a moment, but there was no response from her.

"Allie, are you asleep?" I asked a mite miffed.

I open my heart, and she falls asleep on me?

"No, ..." she said quietly, then she added mockingly: "Hmmm, my poor little Coraline is scared."

I bit my lip. "Allie," I said sadly, "that's not funny. I was being serious."

"I know," she said softly. "It's that you just don't see yourself at all, do you?"

"I guess not," I said humbly.

"So," she said, "when I was so scared, and I was losing it by the river, were you scared?"

"No," I said.

"Did you know what to do?" she said.

"Yes," I said.

"Yes, you did," she said. "Just like that person I saw in the shelter. You knew exactly what to do in every situation as it arose, even though you probably never anticipated any of those things happening in your life, am I right?"

"Well," I said, "... yes."

"And do you know why?" she said.

"Well," I said, "because they were the right thing to do."

"Yes," she said, "because you were doing what was right by you and for yours."

She laughed lightly. "And you worry if you'll be a good mother? I pity dat foo' who crosses you and your brood."

I smiled a little bit at that. "You make me sound like a Grizzly, for goodness sake!"

I felt her smiling with me. And I liked that.

A lot.

I squirmed on the 'bedding' as it was, the softened earth and grass, but no scratchiness nor insects.

I wonder how the plants would get pollinated.

"Allie," I said.

"Uh, huh," she said lazily.

"So, this is my space bubble, or whatever?" I confirmed.

"Do you always get chatty when you're supposed to sleep?" she scolded back groggily.

"So, is it?" I pressed.

"Uh, huh." She answered carelessly.

I thought about it for a second. "So, my house, my rules."

There was a quiet, thoughtful pause from Allie.

"Oh, this will be good," she said dryly.

"Right?" I demanded.

Alicia was quiet for a while.

"So, ..." I said. "Clothes."

"Okay, so, but why?" Alicia said.

"Okay, _hello?"_ I answered angrily. "You can't be serious!"

I felt her shrug. "The temperature and weather are totally controlled. Clothes are superfluous."

"No, they're not," I said firmly.

"Oh, Coraline is a bit of a prude, is she?" Alicia teased.

I wasn't in a teasing mood. "There is a difference between prudish...-ness? and _modesty, _Alicia, and you've been around people long enough to know this!"

Alicia was quiet. "I do know about modesty, and I know about lechery, too, and I know no matter what clothes covered me, they didn't stop a lecher, be he a man, ... or a woman, from looking at me with lust, and acting on that lust."

She was quiet again. "Clothes don't matter. In fact, they give imagination free reign and pent up lust so that it explodes over somebody, and she suffers for it." She added: "Being naked, there's nothing to hide: everything's out in the open, so, at least there's honesty with respect to a person's body."

"That's fine if we're in the garden of Eden and everybody's innocent and fine with that," I began.

"And we all are, Caroline," Alicia butt in. "We function fully and without embarrassment. You've seen that."

"You do," I said.

Alicia was quiet.

My tone was getting more heated in this conversation. I took a deep breath and tried to regain my composure.

"I don't want to raise my child, Alicia ..." I gritted my teeth. "Jesus! ... where modesty is ignored! Innocence or no, and it's not a matter of honesty or not, it's a matter of some things being private, Allie, and some things are public, and some things are intimate and should only be exposed in the most intimate of settings, not shown everywhere to everybody!"

"Either I'm valued or I'm not," I said, "and if I'm ... okay, exposing myself to everybody regardless of who they are, all the time ... _God!_ Is that how you see me? Really? You don't care whom I'm exposed to or who my daughter is? Really?"

_There._ I thought.

I was scared I wasn't going to win this clothes-argument. I didn't even know we were going to be having an argument, but here it was, and I was pleased with myself that I was able to say what I needed to say what was important, and why.

I felt Alicia not liking this conversation at all, either.

"No," she admitted quietly.

"And ..." I blushed a bit, biting my lip.

"And?" Alicia asked.

"Well, okay," I burst out, "so it's fine for y'all to be walking around with no support, but, okay, me? I need a bra, Alicia? Okay? Badly. You can walk around all over the place and not worry about the mommies flopping all over the place and your center of gravity is just fine, sure, but some us aren't bless with a firm-...er chest, and sag is a real problem here, okay?"

Alicia was quiet. I don't know if she were laughing at me and my huge knockers, or ... what.

"Yeah," she said.

"Yeah!" I retorted.

"You're ... 36DD?" she confirmed.

"Yeah," I said embarrassed now at me, the big-breasted chick. I felt so exposed, so ... gross.

"And when the milk comes in, you'll be even bigger." Alicia added.

"Yeah, gee, thanks, Allie!" I said bitterly. "Joy!"

"So, yes," she said, "you'll need the support to get around."

"Or even not to," I added. "Just sitting up, you know?"

"Okay," she said quietly.

I guess for a skinny kid like her, the bra was a take-it or leave-it option. Not so with me, so maybe this was the first time she had to deal with somebody with had these concerns. Fine, as long as she understood and came around to my way of thinking.

And it was a modesty issue, too.

"So," I said firmly. "Clothes."

"Okay," Alicia said.

"For everybody," I insisted.

Alicia clucked her tongue three times in annoyance.

"You are so gonna be the most popular chick in school!" she said with irritation.

"Like I care!" I said angrily.

"Like I'm surprised!" she retorted, her voice dripping with sarcasm.

We both stewed for a bit.

I did care about one thing, not my chick-popularity at school, like I didn't care then, and I didn't want a repeat of those years, at all, but I did care about Alicia and her good will toward me, and I felt it crumble into dust, again.

Why did we have to fight and both get upset at each other? And over every little thing, too!

"I hate fighting with you, Allie," I said sadly.

"Then why do-..." she snapped.

She stopped herself abruptly and drummed her fingers on my shoulder: _drum, drum, drum._

"I hate it, too," she amended ruefully.

We were quiet for a while.

"I'm glad you're here now, ..." I said shyly. "Will you be here tomorrow?"

"Yeah," she said, "and not only me: if you're a good girl, clothes will be laid out for you, too. Joy."

I was like: _Excuse me? "'Good gi-...ehhhheee!" _I gasped.

For Alicia had pulled me into her so tightly, all my breath left my body. She squeezed me, hard, once, then relaxed her grip.

The baby kicked her again, for good measure.

I smirked.

That felt ... _really_ good. It moved the muscles around my poor, tired back, and it felt better now than it had for, well, weeks and weeks!

Sleeping on my side, and not on the cold concrete floor of the shelter, was just doing wonders now.

I chuckled. "To think, this will be the last time we're sleeping together naked ..."

Oops, that didn't come out right. "I mean, ... um ..."

I blushed. "Yeah," I finished weakly.

Alicia giggled at my embarrassment.

"Don't get any ideas, you!" I growled.

"What ideas ...?" Alicia asked, all innocence.

"Well, ..." I began, heat coming off my head and chest. "I mean... um ..."

"Well, what, Cora_liiine?"_ Alicia asked impishly.

"Oh!" I huffed. "Good night, already!"

"Mmhm," Alicia hummed into my hair. Then she kissed me there, just a little peck, and I felt her drift off into sleep, her body relaxing into mine.

"Allie...?" I asked.

No response, just even breaths from her.

Man, she fell asleep quickly, didn't she!

I closed my eyes and slept.

* * *

**A/N: **_Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?_ by Philip K. Dick. Yes. Yes, they do.

Do terminators sleep? No, of course not, there's no need. So what is Alicia doing, 'sleeping'?

Hmmm.

Well, it _is_ helping Caroline, isn't it? I mean, last we left her, she was in a state. And now she's sleeping peacefully in Alicia's arms.

I wonder: what does Caroline dream of, as she sleeps?

Huh.

**oh, and ps: **Thus endeth my 'Coraline' (mega-)chapter, so, back to writing chapters as best I can. Please bear with me (or 'please "bare" with me' but that will _really _slow me down. Slow down my writing, that is, I might be _'quickened'_ in other ways ITYKWIM ;)


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